Music Beneath the Mountains
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: AU. Little Harry Potter wanders away from the Dursleys one day and is found by a goblin on a mission from Gringotts. Harry grows up in the goblin deeps.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Music Beneath the Mountains  
 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.  
 **Pairing:** None, gen  
 **Content Notes:** AU, minor angst, present tense  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Wordcount:** This part 3600  
 **Summary:** AU. Little Harry Potter wanders away from the Dursleys' home one day and is found by a goblin on a mission from Gringotts. Harry grows up in the goblin deeps.  
 **Author's Notes:** This is a story being written for my "Samhain to Solstice" series of fics being posted between Halloween and the Winter Solstice this year. The title is a variation of a line from J. R. R. Tolkien's poem "Song of Durin," quoted below, and the section titles likewise come from that poem. This is a twoshot, with a second part to be posted tomorrow.

 _Unwearied then were Durin's folk;  
Beneath the mountains music woke…_

 **Music Beneath the Mountains**

 _The World Was Young_

"What is this?"

The boy looks up. He's been wandering by himself for a long time. His stomach aches, and he thinks that his aunt is going to be so angry with him. But he can't find the way back by himself, he really can't.

Bending over him is what looks like an ugly person. But the boy is used to his uncle and cousin being ugly, and he just looks at the person's jagged teeth and narrowed eyes and claws on his hands. He doesn't flinch when the person reaches out and picks him up. He thinks that maybe they're going to take him home.

"Why are you here?" the person asks him.

People rarely ask the boy questions. He has to think about it before he finally answers, "I went out of the garden."

"You're lost?"

The boy nods. That ought to explain it, he thinks, and now the person will take him home.

But the person just goes on staring at him, as if lost boys are strange. Then he reaches up and brushes away the boy's hair. The boy flinches. He's sure, he's _sure,_ that any second the person is going to laugh at his scar. His aunt is always telling him how ugly it is. Sometimes the boy thinks he would like it if she didn't call it ugly, but that never happens.

"Your name is Harry Potter?"

The boy hesitates. "I don't know?"

"You _must_ know. Human children are old enough by your age to know their names!"

"Well, I mean, I just get called boy and freak," the boy explains, even though he doesn't like explaining it. "Maybe my name is Harry Potter? I think Aunt Petunia called me Harry once."

The person closes his eyes and mutters to himself in what sounds like another language. The boy listens with interest. "Can I learn that language?" he asks, when the person falls silent and opens his eyes again.

"Listen to me. I called you a human child. Don't you know what that means?"

"You're not human?"

The person starts to answer, and then pauses. "And that doesn't bother you?"

The boy shakes his head. He feels a little hopeful. Maybe he's found a freak, like him. Maybe the person will take him away to the land where all the freaks live, and then he'll be with people like him and won't have to wash the dishes or weed the garden again. "Can I come with you to where your land is?"

The person just keeps staring at him. Then he asks, "What are your relatives like?"

"They don't like me. They call me freak. I sleep in a cupboard—"

"What?"

"A cupboard," the boy repeats, glaring at the person. He can't tell the truth if the person keeps interrupting! "It's under the stairs. My cousin has two bedrooms, but they say I can't have one. Because I'm a freak."

The person chatters his teeth together sharply. It makes a noise like something dangerous. The boy hopes he can learn to do that, too. Before he can ask the question, the person smiles. "So they won't come looking for you?"

"I don't think so. They don't know where I am right now."

The person nods and says, "Then you can come with me. There is a land for my kind—we are called goblins—and I think _we_ should have the charge of raising you. Since your guardians have done such a poor one." He laughs deep down in his chest. The boy thinks the sound is kind of scary, but it makes the goblin's chest underneath him vibrate pleasantly.

"Okay. Can I learn your language? Can I chatter my teeth like you do?"

The goblin nods and begins to carry him away. The people walking by don't seem to notice them, the boy realizes. It's as if they have a magical bubble traveling with them. "You may need some help with the teeth. But you will receive all the help you need, and more, from my clan."

* * *

"I suppose you don't know what you're doing."

"Of course I do."

The goblin who rescued the boy is called Ripclaw, he has learned. He thinks it's a wonderful name. He plays next to the desk in the office that Ripclaw has brought him to. They don't think he's listening, but he is. The boy learned how to listen when he was young. Sometimes that means he can avoid Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia when they're in a bad mood, or Dudley when he's coming with his gang.

"The wizards are going to come looking for him."

"Let's ask him. Potter!"

The boy stands up and walks obediently around the desk. They're underground, he knows that much, from the stone walls and the cool air around them. But the desk really does look exactly like the one in offices he's sometimes seen on the telly, when Dudley doesn't notice him standing in the kitchen doorway. It's huge and made of white rock and has gold lines in it. Another goblin leans down from behind it and stares at him.

"What is a wizard?" the goblin asks.

The boy considers it carefully. He hopes this isn't some kind of test. He'll probably fail it. "I don't know," he finally has to say.

Ripclaw laughs. The goblin behind the desk, who also has gold in his teeth, gives Ripclaw a harsh look that makes the boy step back. He doesn't want to be in between them if the desk goblin attacks Ripclaw the way Uncle Vernon attacks Harry.

But instead, the desk goblin turns back to Harry. "A wizard is a person like you who can do magic."

"I can't do magic."

"Surely something has happened around you? Something strange that the Muggles couldn't explain?"

"I don't know, because I don't know what a Muggle is." The boy hopes that the desk goblin is calmer than he looks, because otherwise he's probably going to get tossed out. Then he'll _never_ get to learn that language or chatter his teeth like Ripclaw.

"The Muggles are humans like your aunt and uncle who don't have any magic." The desk goblin lowers his hand and rips the side of the desk up with a screeching sound. The boy hopes he can learn to do that, too.

"Oh." The boy thinks about it. Then he offers, "Once I got up on the roof of the school without knowing how I did it. Dudley, he's my cousin, he was chasing me with his friends and I knew they were going to beat me up, and I ran fast, and then the wind tossed me up on the roof of the school."

"That's not the wind. That was your magic."

The boy gives that some consideration. Uncle Vernon says there's no such thing as magic. But then, Uncle Vernon probably thinks there's no such thing as goblins, too. The boy feels that maybe Uncle Vernon isn't as smart as he always thought he was.

"All right. Then I suppose I'm a wizard?"

"Yes. You are. And famous among them, for surviving a curse that no one else could survive." Ripclaw leans forwards, and the boy holds still as he traces the zigzag path of the scar on his forehead with one talon. "You have the most inspired luck. Or perhaps someone did powerful magic to protect you."

The desk goblin says something in the language that the boy wants to learn. Ripclaw answers, and it sounds like they're arguing. The boy hunches his shoulders a little. He doesn't like arguments. They always seem to end up with him getting hurt.

"But they must know where he _is_ ," the desk goblin finally says in English.

"I suspect not." Ripclaw glances at the boy. "I want you to tell Gorgeslitter what you told me. About what your relatives called you and where you sleep."

"They call me freak. I sleep in a cupboard. My cousin beats me up a lot," the boy adds, because Gorgeslitter's face is getting dark but the boy is starting to think that he isn't angry at _him_. "They want me to make meals for them. Sometimes I have to do it and sometimes I don't. They don't like it when I act like a freak—I mean, use magic."

Gorgeslitter stands up and leaves the office. The boy glances at Ripclaw. "Do I get to stay?"

"Gorgeslitter needs to check some things." Ripclaw takes a long knife from somewhere. One minute his hand isn't holding it, and the next it is. "In the meantime, why don't you come here and I'll show you some of the finer points of using a blade?"

* * *

The boy thinks he's getting pretty good at holding the knife and twisting it so that it will cut flesh or fur by the time Gorgeslitter comes back. There are more goblins behind him. The boy holds the knife so that it points at the floor. The first thing Ripclaw told him, besides who made the knife and how old it is, is that you never point it at another goblin unless you're challenging them.

The boy is still determined to be a goblin. It sounds much more interesting than being a wizard.

"We have decided," says Gorgeslitter, motioning at the goblins with one claw. The boy watches them. They wear all sorts of blades, and some carry spears. They have bracelets and collars and rings of metal, too, and some of them have caps. Helmets, the boy thinks that's the word. "If the humans do not want him, we will take him in."

The boy whoops and dances around with the knife in his hand, taking care to keep it pointed at the floor. He makes it all the way around, and stops to see Gorgeslitter staring hard at Ripclaw. "Was _that_ necessary?" he asks, pointing at the knife.

"He wants to be a goblin. You can't start him too young."

"And I'm already six," the boy thinks he has to say. "I'm six years behind all the other goblins."

There is a murmur from some of the goblins behind Gorgeslitter, and one that Harry thinks is a woman moves forwards. She has a chain of teeth around her neck and thick bracelets on her wrists. The boy looks at her. "What's your name?" he asks.

"Toothsplitter," she says. "I am a smith. Do you know what that is?"

The boy shakes his head. Toothsplitter touches him gently on the forehead. "Then I will tell you, as soon as you tell me your name in return. It is very rude in goblin society to offer your name and be scorned."

"Oh." The boy flushes. "Sorry. My name is—Harry Potter." When he says it, he says it more confidently than he ever has, and he knows that he is leaving "freak" and "boy" behind forever.

"Better. I make weapons and jewelry and many other things out of metal. Come and see the smithy."

Toothsplitter takes his hand, and Harry gives the knife back to Ripclaw with a whispered thanks. Or he tries to give it back. Ripclaw steps away and shakes his head. "Keep the knife. Your first knife is always lucky. And you'll remember old Ripclaw when you're great and powerful."

Harry thinks that's kind of silly, because he doesn't want to be great and powerful, he just wants to be a goblin. But he nods and smiles at Ripclaw, and then Toothsplitter takes him through a hole in the wall and down a long tunnel that's lit by fires. Harry thinks they're brilliant. They're not torches on the walls, but fires that dance on the walls. Toothsplitter lets him stop at one point and reach out so that he can touch one.

"They're geodes," she tells him. "Bits of gems that we've embedded in the walls, so that they can reflect any sort of faint illumination and fill our lives with light."

Harry is learning all sorts of new words today, but not the ones he _wants_ to learn. "How do you say those things in your language?"

Toothsplitter laughs and tells him. Harry rolls the words around in his mouth like rocks as they go down and down.

They finally come to a huge archway that has darkness behind it. No, wait, not darkness. When Harry squints, he can make out red flashes in that darkness. It looks as though something's on fire in the distance.

"Come and see," Toothsplitter says, and she guides him under the archway. There's a snake with spread wings over it. But Toothsplitter tells him it's a dragon, and their image brings good luck to smiths, because dragons have the hottest fire.

They step into the darkness, and Toothsplitter says something in the goblin language. The darkness suddenly flashes harder and harder, and Harry is looking out into the largest cave he's ever seen or dreamed of. He can't even see the _walls_.

There are glowing red fires everywhere, and huge lakes that are silver and gold—Toothsplitter tells him there are actual metals in those lakes, not just water—and goblins walking around with stones and axes and _geodes_ and rings and knives, and hissing steam as water gets poured over the fires, and ringing hammers, and voices singing. Harry isn't sure about the singing voices at first, but then he listens, and they're there. He hops up and down in delight.

The songs rise and twist back and forth. They're in the goblin language. Harry wants to know what they say. He wants to know what they say more than he's ever wanted something in his life. It sounds like the earth itself is singing.

"Welcome," Toothsplitter says softly in English, "to the Realm of Song." And then she repeats it in the goblin language, so Harry can learn that, too.

 _Many-Pillared Halls of Stone_

Harry grows to maturity in the embrace of the Realm of Song.

It sprawls everywhere underground, breathing in the darkness, the deepness, the vents of warm air from the smithies and the lakes of silver and gold that surge back and forth in the deepest caverns. Harry hangs over the edge of red-glowing abysses and stares down, and goblins like Toothsplitter or Gravensword, her burly apprentice, teach him the names of all the stones and the exact shades of light that he can see.

He walks through shadows, and learns how to see in them better than in the daylight. In fact, when he comes up sometimes to walk through Diagon Alley in disguise, he has to hide his eyes from the sun. They see so much better in the darkness.

He learns how to wield a hammer, although Toothsplitter is an exacting master and keeps stopping him so that she can show him how to grip the shaft better, or aim it at a place in the metal that needs to be beaten smooth, or lecture him about how he can't just get lost in the blows and all of the tools he makes will need a different strength. Then Harry goes back to using the hammer again, only for her to stop him a minute later and teach him something else.

But the day comes when Harry gets through sixty strokes uninterrupted, and Toothsplitter studies the blank of metal and proclaims that it will be a good sword.

Harry is so happy that night that he nearly bangs his head on the low stone roof above his sleeping quarters, something he hasn't done since his first night here.

He plays tag with the goblin children through the abandoned mines and quarries, always together. Although there are few dangers here coming from gas—which the goblins cleared out long ago—or from the darkness they can all see through, sometimes the mines plunge deep, and wake the Deep Ones.

Harry learns all the warning signs from the goblin children: the way the earth shakes under your feet in jerks too sharp for it to be an earthquake, how the walls turn purple instead of black or grey, how a sweet smell like nightshade fills your nostrils. Then you run, and run, and never look behind you, until the things that sleep in the deep places of the world go back to that sleep.

There's only one of the children eaten during the time that Harry grows up in the Realm of Song. But the screams of that one, the way that flesh sounds when it's pulled apart, remain in Harry's dreams forever.

He learns the names of jewels finished and rough, the veins of ore that run through all the tunnels of the joined world, and how to judge at a glance whether a tunnel is supported well enough to run through or not. He learns Gobbledegook, as he wished, and he learns Latin because Toothsplitter says that's proper for a wizard to know, and he learns knife-fighting because he's not going to be strong enough to lift a heavy goblin sword even if he's taller than they are.

He learns laws and customs and proper behavior, and _exactly_ how far he can go to break them before someone snarls at him. He wants to file his teeth to points like the bank guards do, but no one will let him. Harry tries to do it himself, but all he does is break a tooth and get a long glare from Blackeyes, the chief goblin healer.

 _No one_ wants to anger Blackeyes. Harry meekly submits to her healing and then tosses the file he tried to use back where he found it.

He learns maths by counting the coins that pour through his fingers when he and the goblin children sneak into unclaimed or abandoned vaults. He learns natural history with dragons and underground plants. He learns history from the legends of the Deep Ones and the goblins' side of the wars—which are always started by something stupid the Ministry does because they don't understand goblins. Harry has to shake his head when he hears the tale of how the Eighth One started. Imagine, _not_ letting a goblin with an iron knot on his sword take the first seat at the table. Harry doesn't understand how wizards can be so stupid.

Sometimes, he despairs that he was born human.

On the other hand, the goblins teach him magic, too, and Harry can learn both human and wizard magic. Goblin magic involves speaking to things. The first time he _asks_ the fire in the forge to reach his desired temperature instead of building it up with a bellows, Harry laughs with exhilaration, and not just because his arms and shoulders are going to thank him for this later.

He _spoke_ , and the fire _listened_! It's wonderful.

There are always things that he can speak to, Harry finds. Swords listen when he asks them to sharpen themselves, and they might do it or they might not, but they hear him. The walls throb with the voices of metals and rock, the voices of the earth, older than anything else. The water sings to Harry as he walks through the darkest places, and once a river asks him to help turn its course, because it wants to run through a deeper bed and rejoin a current that it can hear on the other side of a wall. It takes Harry several days and wizard spells to blow up the wall and let the waters flow together, but he manages it.

And the water sings its thanks, and Harry smiles at it.

Wizard magic is fun, too, juggling light and calling fire and opening locked doors and summoning objects, but when Harry asks what wizards talk to, Gorgeslitter shakes his head.

"They talk to themselves," he said. "And sometimes us and centaurs, or merfolk if they know Mermish. But even then, they don't _listen_."

Harry stares at him, appalled. "But—they have to be able to hear."

"Hearing is different from listening."

Harry nods, chastened. He learned that as his very first lesson. "But really? They don't even listen to us—I mean, you?"

"They don't know that we have anything valuable to say."

"I'm _so_ glad Ripclaw found me."

They're in one of the offices at the bank, covered with a vulgar display of marble and gold to impress the wizards. In truth, Harry knows the marble would like to return to the quarry and the gold would like to be running free in one of the molten lakes. It's a depressing place with all the yearning voices he can't answer.

Gorgeslitter smiles at him. "So are we, young _amaraczh._ "

It's the name they call him when they don't use his wizard name, a combination word that means "human" and "speaker." Harry beams. He knows they'll never call any of the stubbornly deaf wizards that.


	2. Chapter 2

_The Light of Sun and Star and Moon_

As Harry grows older and towards the time that he'll need to go to Hogwarts, the goblins start to insist that he spend more time outside the Realm of Song and walking the streets of Diagon Alley and other wizard enclaves that spread around the goblin banks. "You need to practice English," Gorgeslitter tells him as he guides him around the wizarding section of Paris. He has an illusion on to look like a wizard so no one will rudely gape at him. "Your Gobbledegook is sounding more and more like your native language now."

"What's wrong with that? And I can't practice English here anyway."

"There are wizards here who speak English."

Harry sulks, but Gorgeslitter is firm, and Harry has learned that he won't get away with anything when a goblin looks like that. Grudgingly, he spends more time speaking English, and he spends more time casting spells, and he learns to ignore the voices of wood and stone and water weeping when wizards won't listen to them.

But he does nearly rebel on the day that Gorgeslitter takes him to Ollivander's wand shop.

"Do I really need a wand? I function fine without it," he grumbles in Gobbledegook as Gorgeslitter guides him firmly into the shop.

"Not fine in the way that other wizards will want to see," Gorgeslitter answers.

Harry nods glumly. He has learned that presenting a secretive front to wizards, conforming to what they expect to see, is important. The goblins could win a war with the wizards if they called upon all the resources of the Realm of Song, but no one _wants_ to do that. Exposing those secrets? Having wizards know about the lakes of metal and the Deep Ones and the secrets of forging and crafting? It would be terrible.

So Harry puts his chin up and puts on what he thinks of as his "wizard smile," one calculated to make everyone think that he's nice and simple, and marches into Ollivander's shop. Gorgeslitter stays outside. Harry wishes he could, too, that he had a goblin body as well as a goblin soul, but needs must.

The old man who comes out of the back of the shop to stare at him is at least interesting, with magic writhing around him and his head cocked as if he hears the wands speaking in their boxes. Harry bows his head a little and makes sure he's speaking in English when he says, "Hello, sir. I'm Harry Potter. I've come for my wand?"

"You are Harry Potter. But you haven't come for your wand."

Startled, Harry lifts his head. "But I need it to be a wizard!"

"You are here because the goblins made you come."

Harry narrows his eyes. His hand rests on the knife that Ripclaw gave him, although he hopes that it just looks like he's resting his hand on his hip like a prissy little wizard. He whines, "But I need a wand! Even if the goblins made me come, why can't you give me a wand?"

"I only sell my wands to those they're meant to bond with, Mr. Potter. After you spent so many years in the Realm of Song, there is nothing for you here."

Harry tilts his head to the side, ignoring the wizard for a moment, while his mind drifts among the boxes and listens to the voices of wood and hair and—many other things. Then he looks up and blinks. "You're wrong, sir. There's a wand here that wants to bond with me. Don't you talk to them when they speak?"

Ollivander's mouth falls open a little. Then he turns and gestures at the boxes. "Tell me which one it is, if you can hear them."

"Not just hear, listen," Harry corrects him. He's always liked that distinction. He makes his way along the shelves, listening harder when he hears the murmur ahead of him become sharper and more excited. Then he reaches out, and his fingers brush the edge of the right box. He laughs aloud as the box actually splits apart so the wand can leap into his hand.

It's such a _pretty_ wand! The holly wood gleams, and Harry can't help but pet the side of it where he can see a slight knot in the wood. And the core is phoenix feather. It sings to him with an echo of the bird it comes from. Harry thinks it's _ghalimart_ , and he never uses that word for anything but some goblin magic.

He turns around to find Ollivander squinting at him. "Can it be?" he murmurs to himself. "Can you really be a goblin-trained wizard who has retained wizard magic?"

"They always taught me wizard magic," Harry corrects him. But he does it gently, because so many wizards don't know a thing about goblins. It's not their fault, the poor stupid things. "Here are the Galleons, sir."

Ollivander takes the Galleons slowly, moving as if he wants to drop them. Harry can ignore the sad chirping voices of the coins well enough. They're so changed from what they used to be that they don't retain much more than a dream of living free in lakes.

"I think you are going to change the wizarding world, Mr. Potter," Ollivander says as Harry steps out the door.

Harry throws a startled look over his shoulder, but shakes his head and keeps walking. He can't change it by _himself_. That would require wizards to start listening to goblins and walls and floors and all the rest, and he doesn't think they ever will.

* * *

"This is the train that you must depart on."

Harry sighs and stares at the train in front of him. It has too many voices in it for him to separate them: voices of iron and other metals and steam and wheels and coal and furniture. He turns to Toothsplitter, who stands lightly next to him and ignores the whispers and stares from other wizards. "What if I don't like it and I want to come home?"

"The Realm of Song will always be your home," Toothsplitter replies in Gobbledegook, and reaches out to cup the sides of Harry's face. "And I have a present that should make you feel better."

"Unless it's you coming with me, then—"

Harry gasps when he sees the belt buckle glinting in the middle of Toothsplitter's palm, though. She's right, it _does_ cheer him up. He scoops it up and stares at it, aware that he's licking his lips and looks greedy. He doesn't care. The intricate pattern of gold and iron knots on the buckle can only mean one thing.

Harry looks up. "You're promoting me to journeyman because I'm leaving?"

"Of course that is not the only reason. Did you think I would let you get away with shoddy work?"

Harry grins, because he does know his teacher. No, Toothsplitter would never do a thing just for sentimental reasons. If she's promoting him to journeyman smith, she really does think his work is that good. He leans closer and rests his forehead briefly on her arm, giving her the greeting an apprentice goblin uses to a master for the last time. "Good-bye. I don't know what the wizarding world will be like, but I think they're a little stupid."

Toothsplitter laughs aloud and puts one hand on his shoulder. "Go in peace, little one. And astound them. That's the way you are."

Harry waves at her and runs onto the train. He has a trunk with his clothes and his weapons and his wand and his school supplies. He doesn't have much else. The knowledge he carries is in his head; Harry does read books, but most of the way goblins pass on knowledge is with song.

Harry wonders if he'll run into anyone else in the wizarding world who values such things. Probably not. But he might still have a good time here anyway if he can keep in mind that wizards just don't _listen_ the way he does.

* * *

People keep gawking at him. But when Harry says something in response to their demands to see his scar, or their gasps, or something else, they all flinch back from him. They seem to expect him to be _human_.

Oh, well. Harry did tell Toothsplitter that he already knew most wizards would be stupid. It's only a little disappointing to be proven right.

They're standing in the Great Hall right now, with clouds hovering overhead. Harry thinks that's fascinating and hopes he gets the chance to talk to the ceiling. Sometimes it's hard to do that because the walls or the floor think you're addressing them instead, and the Great Hall is the highest place he's ever been in.

And the _brightest_. Harry's eyes are watering behind his glasses. He hopes that most of the corridors are darker.

Some of the schoolbooks he got did talk about the Houses, but Harry wasn't sure which one he wanted to be in until he heard some of the other students talking on the train. Now he knows there's only one choice.

" _Gryffindor_!' shouts the Hat for a few people, and " _Hufflepuff_!" for others. Harry waits. The line in front of him gets shorter and shorter, but some people already have their eyes fixed on him. They knew what he looks like because of pictures in the newspapers when he was young, the books told Harry.

It still makes Harry think they're all slightly stupid. Why would you trust a _photograph_ to tell you what someone is really like? Only their magic and their work can do that.

"Potter, Harry!"

Harry walks forwards and confidently reaches for the Hat when the older professor standing by the stool hands it to him. She's staring at him. Harry smiles at her, but he's embarrassed for her, too. By the time that you get to that age in goblin society, you're respected and probably a master smith or healer or counter or some other important profession. You don't go around gaping at people because you should be the kind of person they gape at instead.

The Hat settles over his eyes, and promptly says, "What a fascinating notion of the world you do have, to be sure."

" _I'm glad you can talk back_ ," Harry tells it. " _There are so many objects here that feel dim and dull, probably because no one ever pays attention to them._ "

The Hat chuckles, making the older woman gasp. But its other words are mental, like Harry's, and no one else can hear them. " _They are dim and dull. But you have—well, an unusual mind. Where would you like to go, Harry Potter? There is only one House that would be absolutely unsuited for you, and that would be Hufflepuff_."

" _Because they're all so loyal to many things instead of one?"_

" _That would be part of it, yes._ "

Harry nods. " _I'd like to go to Ravenclaw_."

" _Only because they have a half-goblin Head of House_?"

" _Do you really think that most wizards are going to like or sympathize with me once they find out that I was raised by goblins? I want someone who will. And I like learning, too. Just because I don't read books all the time doesn't mean that I wouldn't fit into Ravenclaw._ "

The Hat chuckles again for him. " _Indeed, and well-argued. That logical side will help you in your new House as well. Best of luck to you in_ RAVENCLAW!"

Harry hands the Hat back to the older woman, who's blinking, and then hops off the stool. As he heads towards the table decorated in bronze and blue, he catches the eye of the small professor and mouths, " _Hello_ ," in Gobbledegook.

The professor's mouth falls open, but he nods and mouths back, " _Welcome, young speaker_ ," and then applauds harder than ever, and Harry's heart sings.

 _Unwearied Then_

It actually turns out to be simpler living in the wizarding world than Harry ever thought.

For one thing, he just speaks the truth when people ask him about where he was, and he ignores the gasps and outrage. Some people think he shouldn't have been raised by goblins. But then, some people think they have the right to steal possessions, and some people think wands don't have voices, and some people think they should be allowed to kill others and get away with it outside a war or a formal dueling ring. That doesn't make them _right_. Harry lives in reality. He ignores their opinions and guards his possessions and listens to his wand and is ready to defend people.

His Potions professor hates him. He keeps saying Harry should read the book. Harry chants the properties of aconite and bezoars the first day for him in class, but it just makes Snape turn incredibly purple.

Harry reckons that's partially because he couldn't answer the question about the Draught of Living Death with goblin knowledge. Well, Harry does try to read the books more often, but they are boring. Things would be improved if wizarding society had bards you could pay to sing about potions.

Some of the Ravenclaws think he's mental for creating music for himself when he studies, but he hums it quietly and goes into the dungeon corridors that few people seem to use when he wants to sing aloud, so they mostly ignore it.

Harry also finds plenty of friends in the castle when humans are avoiding him. There are mirrors that no one has ever asked to shine, blocks of stone in the walls that still remember their quarries, and staircases that always lead Harry in the right direction because he asks them nicely. The Great Hall's ceiling is as fascinating to talk to as Harry thought it would be.

Professor Flitwick is pretty fascinating, too. He asks Harry lots of questions about the Realm of Song when Harry is serving the inevitable detentions Snape assigns him, and the detentions he gets from Professor McGonagall because he asks his wand to do things instead of using the proper incantations, and the detentions he gets from the Astronomy professor for not doing the homework (Harry just doesn't think stars are _interesting_ , because they're too far away to talk to).

Professor Flitwick arranges for Harry to serve the detentions with him, and he does try to speak to Harry about doing his homework more. But he ends up laughing most of the time, so Harry knows Professor Flitwick isn't annoyed.

"You should do your Astronomy essays, however, Harry," he tells him in Gobbledegook as Harry finishes up writing some lines in English about how he will not disobey the professors. "Poor Professor Sinistra."

"But how much am I going to use Astronomy? And my eyes can't see some of the things she's talking about, anyway."

Professor Flitwick leans forwards and studies him seriously when he says that. "Are you saying that your eyes were damaged from living underground, Harry?"

"They're not damaged. But they're not used to looking at stars. And how much do you use Astronomy in your life now, Professor Flitwick?"

Professor Flitwick says, "Harry, that is not the _point_. I want you to start doing your Astronomy homework."

But he smiles when he says it, so Harry decides he's won and that squinting a little harder to see the stars Professor Sinistra is talking about won't be so bad.

* * *

Professor Dumbledore comes ambling up the stairs to Ravenclaw Tower one day and wants to stop and talk to Harry. Harry tells him that he can but he's very busy working on one of those missing Astronomy essays, so can it wait?

Professor Dumbledore looks at him for a very long time when he says that. Harry gets bored and goes back to writing his Astronomy essay. They're sitting on the stairs outside Ravenclaw Tower. It's one of the staircases that likes Harry, and Harry reaches out and absently pats one of the steps.

It seems the professor decides that means it's good to talk now. "One of the things that I am concerned about, Mr. Potter, with you being goblin-raised, is that you don't seem to have many friends at Hogwarts."

Harry blinks. "I'm not sure who told you that, sir. I have _lots_ of friends. I can think of fifty or so off the top of my head."

"Is that so, Harry? Would you mind introducing me to them?"

"Of course. The first one is the staircase you're standing on. It's grateful that people don't spill butterbeer on it like they do with the floor in Gryffindor Tower, but it doesn't like us carrying all those heavy books up it. The Sorting Hat is fascinating, too. Sorry that you found me in your office that time, but I just wanted to talk to it."

Being in the Headmaster's office is one of those things that everyone else treated with shock and horror. Even Professor Flitwick seemed upset with him. But Harry doesn't understand. Finding hollow places in the stone is natural to him. And he doesn't understand why they call them "secret passages," either. Harry _offered_ to tell the professors about them, so they wouldn't be secret anymore. The only people who wanted to listen were those two red-haired Weasleys from Gryffindor, though.

"I was asking about human friends, Harry."

"Oh, sorry, sir. You didn't say. Well, there's Fred and George Weasley from Gryffindor, and Professor Flitwick. I also think that it's very easy to talk to Cedric Diggory. He wants to know a lot about how his broom sounds when he rides it. I was able to tell him some of the bristles were about to break off! He said thank you and that he would take better care of it."

"If you had grown up with your relatives, Harry, then you would have had a normal life when you came here."

"How does sleeping in a cupboard make me normal, sir?"

Professor Dumbledore stares at him. He doesn't appear to know what to say.

"They called me a freak and never told me about magic," Harry tells Professor Dumbledore, shaking his head. He thinks poor Professor Dumbledore can't be that smart, even though Fred and George's brother Percy always says he's a genius. Well, Percy also isn't that smart. "My people always told me about magic and that I was human and had me practice English and wizard magic. That's a lot better than my relatives."

"You—you are the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry."

"Yes, sir, I am. I lived a much better life in the Realm of Song than with my relatives." It's been a long time since Harry thought about the Dursleys. He pities them now. They'll never hear a river speak or watch molten gold dance in front of them or argue with Toothsplitter about cases in Latin. It's such a sad, limited life.

"That means that you must face down Voldemort."

"Oh, _him_. He's kind of a waste of space, isn't he? Anyway, most of my people don't think so. Blackeyes thinks that it had something to do with my scar, but she healed the piece of soul in my scar, so it can't have anything to do with that anymore."

Professor Dumbledore sits down very hard on the steps.

"Your—your scar is still visible," he whispers when a few minutes have passed and Harry has written a few more lines on his Astronomy essay.

"Yeah, Blackeyes said it had been there too long to do much about in the end," Harry says distractedly as he flips through the book to find the fact he needs. Honestly, he wishes books had voices of their own instead of the voices of the leather and sinew and paper they're made from. It would make it easier to ask them where facts are hiding. "But she got rid of the piece of soul." He looks up hopefully. "Sir, do _you_ know why Jupiter's rings are important?"

"I think," Professor Dumbledore says slowly, "that is a question you must answer for yourself." He stands up even more slowly. Harry hopes that he hasn't broken a hip or something. Toothsplitter is always unhappy with Gravensword when that happens to him. "Voldemort may still come after you, you know, Harry."

"I'll cut his head off when he tries."

Professor Dumbledore looks like he wants to sit down again. "What?"

Harry draws the knife Ripclaw gave him. "I can cut through skin very fast," he explains. "I can cut off his head."

"It's—it's not that simple, Harry."

"It can be," Harry says, and puts the knife away. "If you just let it."

* * *

There are other conversations, and adventures. Harry makes friends with the sinks in the boys' bathrooms, and they tell the others, so when a troll comes wandering into the school and into a girls' bathroom, Harry just has to ask the sinks to turn on all at once. The water comes spraying out and the troll gets it in its eyes and lumbers off so the professors can take care of it.

Harry finds study partners in his House who don't mind that he constantly hums under his breath. Some of them even want to learn Gobbledegook and how to talk to objects. Harry happily shares some of the speaking with them that won't betray secrets of the Realm of Song or crafting and forging, and smiles when he hears Terry Boot asking a shower to turn on and Michael Corner sulking because a stone was mean to him. (Harry did _try_ to tell Michael: you never insult a stone's flakes of mica. It's just not _done_ ).

A few Slytherins try to insult him, but they stop when the floors beneath their feet constantly buckle and their own books refuse to open.

All in all, Harry fits better into the wizarding world than he thought. But he's still happy when the Christmas holiday comes and he can go back to London and through the front offices of Gringotts that are only for show and down into the darkness again.

Toothsplitter welcomes him with a challenge to prove that he hasn't lost all his smithing skill, and Harry spends his first night hammering all the dents out of a breastplate that some idiot giant wore against a dragon.

Then he sits on the shore of a dark river and exchanges tales of Hogwarts with Gorgeslitter and Ripclaw and Gravensword and his young goblin friends, and listens to the songs continually going on in the background.

He falls asleep in his small sleeping space that night, and goes running through tunnels the next morning. The stone chants underneath his feet, tales as old as the planet. Harry feels the weight of his wand in his pocket, its soft curiosity about the Realm of Song, and smiles.

He can have two worlds, and anyone who says that he can't is lying. But the Realm of Song is always going to be home.


	3. In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke

**Chapter Summary:** The second half of goblin-raised Harry's first year and the first half of his second year at Hogwarts, where he finds even more people, things, and animals to talk to, and manages to gently correct some people's mistakes.  
 **Author's Notes:** This is both one of my "From Litha to Lammas" fics and a sequel to my fic "Music Beneath the Mountains," which you should read first. The title of the fic and the italicized titles of its different sections come from poems by Tolkien. This will have a second part, to be posted tomorrow.

 **In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke**

 _With Dwarves and Hobbits, Elves and Men,_  
with mortal and immortal folk,  
with bird on bough and beast in den,  
in their own secret tongues he spoke.

-J. R. R. Tolkien, "Frodo's Lament for Gandalf"

 _He Walked at Will_

Harry stands with his head cocked to the side. He can hear something speaking in a gentle voice from deep underground. The odd thing is that he can't tell exactly what it's talking about, other than boredom. And it's mingled with another voice, as though two objects of the exact same kind have decided to sing in chorus.

"Harrikins! What are you—"

"Doing here, little goblin-friend?"

Harry glances up at Fred and George with a faint smile, but he really wants to solve the mystery of the two different voices right now. He started hearing them sing last term, and he never managed to find out where their songs were coming from. "Hi, you lot. I'm listening."

Fred and George never seem to doubt him now, although they don't practice the listening magic much themselves. George nods. "Did you know that that this is the third-floor corridor?"

Harry blinks. "What do you mean? Of course I knew." If nothing else, the walls and stones underneath this corridor complain all the time about the weight they bear. It's a particularly fussy part of the castle.

"Don't you remember the feast at the start of the year?"

"Of course. It's where I spoke to the Sorting Hat for the first time."

Fred and George exchange some glances that almost look like they're exasperated. Harry is sorry for exasperating them, but he also wishes they would explain _what_ they're thinking. Harry is good at listening, but not at mind-reading.

"Headmaster Dumbledore said—"

"Everyone should stay out of this corridor—"

"On pain of death."

"Oh, right." Harry nods. Now that they're talking about it, it does sound familiar. "Well, but he couldn't have meant me. Nothing here will harm me, so it's perfectly all right if I'm here. And I want to figure out why two things have chosen to sing in chorus at the same time. One of them sounds like a stone, but stones are pleased to have their individual voices, most of the time. Even if we have to listen to them from a distance because the voices sound like one murmuring choir to us."

The twins exchange glances. They do that a lot. Then Fred says, "For our sake, Harrikins—"

"We just get worried, you know," George says. "It's silly of us, but we do."

"Why don't you try to hear the voices while staying _out_ of the third-floor corridor? For us."

Harry decides he can do that. Besides, it's sort of getting boring to stand here when he can't tell where the voices are coming from. "Fine," he says, and walks out of the third-floor corridor. A set of stairs is already waiting for them. They like to do that, since Harry can talk to them. But sometimes they're terribly competitive about which one carries him down, and Harry has had to speak firmly to the flights that want to swing around and bang into each other.

"Thank Merlin," Fred says under his breath as they trot after Harry.

Harry shakes his head a little. Sometimes he thinks the hardest thing about relating to other wizards is the sense of unnecessary fear they have.

* * *

 _Without a Word_

"Sir, I have a question." Harry is lingering behind in Defense Against the Dark Arts despite the strong smell of garlic that fills the classroom. He's had to resign himself to that, too, that some humans would rather frighten vampires away with garlic than just stab them.

"Y-yes? S-speak, young Potter." Professor Quirrell is putting away old defense shields that he had them practice casting magic at. Harry is happy to find that they can enjoy their work, since otherwise he doesn't think he could hit things that can't hit back.

"Why doesn't your turban talk, sir?"

Quirrell stumbles, and the shields go all over the floor. They complain in the voices of wood that remembers being trees; the floor makes a mild comment. Harry helps pick the shields up and stack them in a corner.

"Wh-what did you say?" Quirrell whimpers, turning to look at him.

Harry frowns. Oh, dear. Is this another of those human things that he doesn't understand? Most of the time, wizards don't listen to objects or they don't want to, but he's never seen someone so flustered just by a question. "I asked why your turban doesn't talk, sir. Most of the clothes around here do, you know? They remember being plants sometimes, or they remember being woven. Silk talks in an interesting way about coming out of the rear ends of worms."

"My turban does not talk, Mr. Potter. It _never_ has."

"Okay," Harry says slowly. Well, he supposes that he'll have to give up. He doesn't know how Quirrell can be so certain about that when he probably doesn't listen any more than most humans do, but Harry will have to accept it if Quirrell states it that definitively.

"Get out of my classroom, Mr. Potter."

"Okay, sir," Harry replies, trying to be polite so Quirrell can see that Harry didn't upset him on purpose. He would prefer if people _knew_ when he was trying to upset them on purpose.

Harry sighs as he leaves the classroom. He would never give up the knife that hangs on his belt or the Gobbledegook words that hum in his mind for anything, but he does wish that he understood humans better. The goblins have an ongoing argument about whether wizards are stupid because they live aboveground or because they don't forge enough metal, with more people favoring the first one.

But Harry is starting to think that it isn't either one. It's just not _listening_.

* * *

 _A Deadly Sword_

"You didn't do your homework _again_ , did you, Potter? Did you really think that that potion is dark purple instead of just dark? But then, I forgot, you ruined your eyesight by peering down tunnels or _some_ such thing." Professor Snape sneers as he walks past Harry's cauldron.

Harry puts down the stirring rod he was about to use. "Did you insult my eyesight, sir?"

Terry Boot gives a little hiss next to him and shakes his head at Harry. Harry only frowns at him. Too bad. This has been going on for a long time, and Harry tried to give Professor Snape time to adjust. Professor Flitwick dropped a hint, just a little one, about how Harry's father was Snape's enemy. Harry knows about hereditary enemies and respects that Snape might be trying to get honor back in the limited ways allowed in a human school.

But now he's on the verge of going too far.

"I did not insult your eyesight, Mr. Potter," Snape says, and sneers at him again. Harry is about to assume he was mistaken, when Snape adds, "I insulted everything about you. You should never have come here. You do not deserve to be in these hallowed halls. Five points from Ravenclaw for dishonoring your House."

Harry isn't the only one who stares at Snape, but he's the only one who seems to know the right thing to do. Harry takes a small iron bit from his pocket, one that come from Toothsplitter's forge, and hurls it to the floor in front of Snape. The man takes a step back and stares at him, but doesn't try to pick it up.

Harry sighs. Does he have to do _everything_ around here? "I challenge you to a duel, Professor Snape," he explains. "Pick up the iron if you agree."

"That is _ridiculous_ , Mr. Potter!" Snape hisses, seeming to recover. "Students and professors do not fight duels."

"Well, you're not acting like a professor right now, and you just said I shouldn't be a student. I don't see why we can't."

Harry can feel everyone staring at him. He wants to sigh again. He's the one who's fighting within the goblin rules, and he's trying to go by the rules that Snape stated, too.

It occurs to him that maybe Snape didn't mean it when he said that Harry dishonored Ravenclaw by being here, but that's even more puzzling. Why would you say something if you didn't _mean_ it?

"I am not picking up the Knut you have thrown at me, Mr. Potter. I am not succumbing to this farce, this insistence of yours that you are special. Fifty points from Ravenclaw."

There's gasps of dismay around him, but Harry is still studying Snape. Then he finally says, "You're afraid, aren't you?"

Snape's back stiffens and his eyes blaze the way Gravensword's did when Toothsplitter told him he wasn't ready to advance to journeyman. "Are you aware of what you are saying, Mr. Potter?" he whispered, his voice filling the classroom like smoke.

The goblins taught Harry how to handle fires. He nods. "Yes, and I think that you're afraid." He flicks his eyes at the iron bit on the floor. "You didn't even look closely enough to see that the duel bit was made from iron and not copper. I wonder if you need your eyes checked, or if you can only see things you make up."

"Detention every night," Snape says. "For the rest of term. With Mr. Filch." And he turns away and goes back to the front of the classroom as if Harry doesn't exist.

Harry shakes his head and leaves the duel bit in the middle of the floor. If he picked it up again, it would mean he was retracting the challenge, and he doesn't respect Snape enough to do that.

* * *

 _When Evening Was Grey_

"I heard about your challenge to Professor Snape, Harry. He asked me to speak to you about it." Professor Flitwick puts down the teakettle on a little charmed mat on his desk, which seems to be keeping it warm. Harry smiles. He finds some wizard magic useless, but he'd like to learn that charm. "You cannot go around challenging professors to duels."

"But he said that I wasn't worthy of being a student. Wouldn't that mean I could challenge him to a duel, since I wouldn't be a student?"

Professor Flitwick hesitates for a long time. When he speaks again, it's in Gobbledegook, which always makes something in Harry relax because that means he's talking the _right_ way. "I'm afraid that Professor Snape was exaggerating."

"But he really does hate me. He really does insult me."

"I know…"

"And he even does it to students whose fathers he doesn't hate. So why does he insult them? Why does he think he _can_? Is it just because no one's challenged him before this? Someone should, to make sure that he stops saying those things and being dishonorable."

Professor Flitwick frowns into his cup. He nudges the plate of copper-smeared biscuits closer to Harry. Harry takes one to be polite. Thanks to magic and tolerance, he can eat the heavy metals goblins prefer to ornament foods with, but he really likes gold better than copper.

"I don't think that no one wants to challenge him," Professor Flitwick finally says, which isn't really the question Harry asked, but it must be important, so he listens. "I think the problem is that they realize the challenge would go nowhere, so they don't try."

"Why would the challenge go nowhere?"

Professor Flitwick hesitates again. Harry finishes one copper-topped biscuit and renews the charm on his teeth that will keep them from cracking. He eyes the rest, but they seem to be more metal than chocolate.

"Professor Snape is not a good teacher," Professor Flitwick finally says, which surprises Harry a little, because it's so obviously true and yet no one says it. "But he didn't become a teacher from the love of it. He's here because he was a spy for our side during the war, and Headmaster Dumbledore gave him a place here to protect him from the political consequences."

Harry can understand that—goblin history is full of deals and bargains that people have made in place of having to give up their honor or weapons—but it still annoys him. "He should have to face the personal consequences, right though, sir? Someone should be able to challenge him as long as they're not from the Ministry?"

"Even that is difficult. Headmaster Dumbledore is the one who is in charge of acting on the complaints."

"That's not right, though. That's a conflict of interest." Not for nothing did Harry attend a lot of meetings with Gorgeslitter where the goblins debated politics.

"Perhaps so, but there is no one who can tell Headmaster Dumbledore not to make that kind of exception for Professor Snape."

Harry sits and thinks about that, and eats yet one more biscuit to be polite. Then he swallows and says, "Can you explain more to me about the structure of wizarding government, sir? I thought I understood it, but there must be some things I'm missing."

Professor Flitwick smiles. "Of course, Harry. Keep in mind that it's really no more difficult to understand than goblin government, once you get used to it."

Harry shakes his head. "But goblin government is based on strength and honor. It _makes sense._ What are the guiding principles behind wizard government?"

* * *

Harry wanders outside later that evening, after a detention that wasn't that much work because the mop and the bucket and the scrub-brush can work on their own when Harry gives them a little help and asks politely. He just had to make sure that he was in the right position and looked like he was "using" then when Filch came around the corner.

The evening is cool and grey. Spring is coming soon. Harry looks into the darkness and watches the centaurs pacing along the edge of the forest. They're nervous, defending far more of their territory far closer to the castle than they should be.

Harry thinks about going over to ask them what's wrong, but honestly, he's a bit overwhelmed by what he's learned. He sits on the grass next to the lake and throws stones into it that want to go into the water and frowns as it ripples. He wishes it was molten silver, like some of the lakes in the Realm of Song. It would help him think better.

Professor Flitwick did a good job of explaining, but it was sort of depressing. Harry understands now what guides wizarding government.

It's self-interest.

The Minister wants to get elected again, and he does whatever he has to do to get that. The Wizengamot want certain laws passed that will benefit them, or sometimes people argue and convince them that those laws will benefit other groups. But only _certain_ groups. Professor Flitwick told him about the horrible laws passed against goblins, which means that the Wizengamot isn't willing to listen to goblins argue, and no wizards want to stand up for them.

Headmaster Dumbledore wants to have Professor Snape around in case the war starts up again. Professor Snape wants to be dishonorable to people and not face the consequences. And it looks like no one thinks they can duel him, because he won't accept the duel.

Harry stands up and goes to the Owlery. He doesn't use the birds a lot, because most of the time he can get a message to Gringotts through the paths of stone and blood under the earth. But an owl will get there faster and get back faster, and sometimes Harry doesn't understand the messages that come through the earth because he's still learning. He wants to know things right away, and clearly.

He wants to know what he should do about this.

* * *

 _Through the Hidden Door_

Harry quietly walks into the room with the mirror behind Professor Quirrell. It was easy to sneak past the dog with the music still playing, and he slipped through the tendrils of the Devil's Snare when it relaxed. He simply chopped the lock off the door in the room with the flying keys, told the chess pieces that it was silly to involve him when they could play themselves, avoided the unconscious troll, and sniffed the potions until he found the ones that smelled like ice and fire. Now he's here, and watches the turban wrapped around the back of Professor Quirrell's head.

Gorgeslitter and Toothsplitter and Blackeye all wrote to him, and they suggested the same thing: he has to make himself a person wizards will listen to. That has to mean performing some great deed, because they don't think enough of him for being this Boy-Who-Lived and they treat him like a little boy.

So Harry watched Professor Quirrell, and saw how strange it was that his turban didn't speak and that he was always lurking around the door that even the Weasley twins avoided. And he followed him down here when he was ready.

Now Professor Quirrell is lurking in front of a giant mirror and scowling. Harry sighs. "What's under your turban, sir?" he asks.

Professor Quirrell whirls around to face him. "The Potter boy," he says, with no trace of a stutter. "Here to get the Stone for yourself?"

"I don't have that much use for emeralds or diamonds right now, because I'm still learning how to forge metal," Harry tells him. "And there are more rubies than wizards think underground, you know. Sapphires might be special, but there are some in my vault that I could give Toothsplitter if she ever needs them."

There's a long moment when Professor Quirrell shakes his head a little, the way adult wizards tend to when Harry talks like the person he is. Harry sighs again. That means Professor Quirrell isn't listening to him and he'll probably have to duel him instead of just stop him.

"I don't mean a gem," the professor says, and glances over his shoulder at the mirror. "I mean the Philosopher's Stone that can turn lead into gold and give you immortal life."

"But why would you want to turn lead into gold? I think they would both object. Gold's kind of haughty, you know. And lead is perfectly happy being the way it is."

Another stare, another head-shake. Then Professor Quirrell says briskly. "All you need to know is that the stone is hidden in the mirror, and I want it."

" _In_ the mirror?" Although Harry studies the glass carefully, it doesn't seem to lead anywhere in particular. There are no hidden tunnels behind it, and it isn't a door set flush with the wall; he makes sure of that by stepping around it to check. "I'm not sure you're right, though. What about behind it? Or in the floor underneath it?"

" _In_ the mirror," Professor Quirrell insists. "And you are going to retrieve it for me." He reaches out and shoves Harry forwards a little with a hand in the middle of his back.

Harry registers the insult, but dimly, because figures are moving in the mirror. He watches curiously as he stands in the middle of a wide stone floor that looks like some of the Audience Chambers under Gringotts. He's wearing the steel medallion of a Master Smith, and behind him, Toothsplitter is beaming with pride. Blackeye is smiling for the first time he's ever seen. There are a few wizards in the distance, mostly his friends, but they look like they're happy for him instead of angry.

"Huh," Harry says, after studying the surface of the mirror for a second. "I can see something I hope will happen, but I don't see any stone that isn't formed into walls and floors. What does it look like?"

"Bright red. Red as hope or morning."

Harry frowns a little at Professor Quirrell over his shoulder. Hope is as grey as a finished sword, everyone knows that. He won't argue with the morning comparison, though. He faces the image, which hasn't changed, except that the Harry with the steel medallion is waving at him. "I don't see it."

Professor Quirrell curses and pushes him out of the way. Harry stumbles, but regains his stance, and studies the turban carefully for a second. Then he hurls one of his small knives directly at it.

There's a horrible shriek that goes on and on and up and up, until Harry claps his hands over his ears to keep himself from going deaf. He retreats into a corner that will protect his back and watches in disbelief as grey smoke boils out from under Professor Quirrell's turban.

The only way that a thing like _that_ should have happened is if Professor Quirrell was carrying something incredibly evil on the back of his head. Harry has daggers that have an ancient protection song on them, but most people he might strike with them just don't qualify as evil enough.

Professor Quirrell falls over and starts screaming and babbling something. The grey smoke swarms around for a second, and then flies towards Harry.

Harry stands up. He's sure that he knows what this is, now. He remembers feeling something a little like it when Blackeye took the piece of Voldemort's soul out of his scar. "You cannot come near me," he says, and he grips his daggers and roots himself in the earth.

The grey smoke tries to dive into him anyway, aiming at his scar. But Harry faces it, and his magic flares, and there's steel all around him, and iron, and the soul doesn't have the same kind of protections. It recoils, and screams again, and then goes skidding through a small crack in the stone.

Harry releases his daggers slowly and takes a deep breath. Then he goes to help Professor Quirrell, taking one more glance at the mirror.

He's startled to realize that he _can_ see a red stone in the mirror now, held in the hand of a boy who might be him, although weirdly this boy looks like he has a redder scar and is smaller. He winks at Harry and holds out the stone and then takes it back, and Harry feels a little sagging weight in his robe pocket.

 _Well, I suppose I can give that stone back to Professor Dumbledore or whoever it actually belongs to,_ Harry thinks, and starts to apply some rudimentary healing techniques that Blackeye taught him to make Professor Quirrell calm down.

He's content in one way. He's performed the great deed that will make wizards respect him. He's defeated a shade that wanted to possess him and rescued someone from being possessed. Wizards will have to listen to him and the goblin perspective now!

* * *

"I am sorry, my dear boy, but you cannot tell anyone about this."

Harry stares very hard at Dumbledore. They're in his office, which was up an interesting moving staircase and has a very old wooden perch that complains the bird perching on it lives too long. But now Dumbledore is saying this thing that doesn't make sense. "Why not? I thought you would agree with me, because you'd want people to know that Voldemort is alive."

"Ah, but we cannot reveal what happened in those hidden rooms without revealing that someone here at the school was possessed by Voldemort, and that means it would be easy for many people to guess it was Professor Quirrell."

Harry blinked. "So what?"

"You would destroy an innocent man's life if you revealed the truth now, Harry."

"He's _not_ innocent! He tried to steal the stone and he might have killed me and he sneaked around with Voldemort in his head the whole school year!

"Ah, but he says now that he was simply possessed, and I believe him. It is few people who would have the mental strength to resist possession by Voldemort, even if he was only a shade." Dumbledore peered at him over his glasses. "How did you do it, Harry?"

"I did it by asking the earth for strength and gripping my daggers."

Dumbledore sighs a little, but doesn't try to disagree, just nodding instead. "But poor Professor Quirrell did not have your goblin training. It is not surprising that he was a victim. And so we will restore the stone to its rightful owner, and say that Professor Quirrell suffered from a brief fit of dragonpox, which in its less destructive forms is known to make people wander and speak nonsense, and say nothing more about it."

"Wait, the stone wasn't your stone?"

"Indeed, no." Dumbledore beams. "I was holding it for my dear friend, the alchemist Nicholas Flamel."

"Oh," Harry says, and then shrugs. The only thing he's happy about is that he's solved the mystery of the twin voices that he heard earlier in the year. It must have been the stone and the mirror, the stone speaking from within the mirror.

He does want to ask Dumbledore something, though, since they're here in the same office and so close. "Why don't you listen to people when they tell you Snape is a terrible teacher?"

"Professor Snape, Harry."

"Really? But he doesn't act much like a professor, and he says I'm not a student." Since that day in class when Snape refused to pick up the iron bit and accept Harry's challenge to a duel, he hasn't used those exact words, but he's told Harry that he's not worthy of being at Hogwarts, many times.

"I am afraid there are complications here that you cannot understand." Dumbledore shakes his head. His smile has gone away. "Much like the need to keep Professor Quirrell from suspicion, we must protect Professor Snape. He made great sacrifices in the war, and he must be kept safe."

"But why do you have to have him be a teacher? Why not just have him brew potions for Madam Pomfrey or something? Get someone else to teach potions."

"Surely you are not questioning my hiring decisions, Harry?"

Dumbledore says that like it's supposed to mean something to Harry, but Harry just keeps his eyes on Dumbledore and says, "The goblins didn't teach me a lot about hiring. But I know that if they have someone who turns out not to be a good smith or healer or translator or warrior, or anything else, they take them out of the job."

Dumbledore is definitely frowning at him now. "I must ask you to cease questioning me, Harry. And respect Professor Snape. And not spread the tales about Professor Quirrell around."

Harry gets up and leaves the office without responding. He has a lot to think about, and a lot to talk about when he sees his people at home again in a few days.

* * *

 _A Trumpet-Voice_

"And that's what happened," Harry finishes. He's speaking for the first time in front of the _Halazhmacharan_ , the General Council, which consists of a representative from every clan. They fill the huge round Audience Chamber. It's a little like the scene in the mirror, but not really.

The goblins exchange glances, and some of the representatives begin murmuring to each other. Harry politely doesn't listen, but waits for someone to ask him a question.

"What was the justification that the old one gave for not wanting to tell the wizards the real story?" a Master Smith finally asks. This is a huge, squat goblin woman, as tall as Harry, with not only a steel medallion around her neck but a huge linked chain of them around her waist, and sapphires set into her ears. Harry knows that she's Stone, just Stone, representative of the Nelakhkhakan Clan, one of the few goblins in the world to be honored by such a simple name.

"He said that it would ruin Quirrell's life because he was an innocent man who just got possessed by Voldemort."

Stone laughs. The laughter ripples from goblin to goblin, and is joined by the banging of hafts and axes and spears and blades on the ground. Harry perks up. He can hear the voices of all the weapons, and they're saying the same thing as the voices of the goblins.

 _War! War! War! War! Truth! Truth! Truth! Truth!_

"We will speak the truth," Stone says, and stands, so that other goblins have to copy her if they want to honor her. Most do. Stone ignores the few who don't, probably people from other clans that have feuds with Nelakhkhakan. She stares directly at Harry. "We will make it clear that there is little honor in Hogwarts, and that there are lies."

Harry beams at her. Those are some of the strongest fighting wards in Gobbledegook. Only a weak person lies, because that means that you don't trust the strength of your weapons.

"We will carry the truth to them," Stone says, and glances around, as if making sure that everyone is listening. "And if they will not listen to the truth, we will have war."

 _War!_ sing the weapons.

 _Truth!_ sing the walls.

Harry smiles wider. This is everything he hoped for. They agree with him about Dumbledore and Snape not being honorable and Quirrell not being innocent…

But even more, they are treating him like a goblin.

He has not stopped being a goblin because he's a wizard. It's all Harry wanted to know.


	4. In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke 2

Thank you for all the reviews! This concludes this chapter of the story, but I will be continuing it at some point and posting another chapter.

 _Shall Come Into His Own_

"Did we pick all the best people we could send the owls to, though?" Harry studies the list of names in front of him with a frown. He knows that ordinarily the clan representatives would be the only ones to see it, so this is really flattering.

On the other hand, he's the one who told them that Dumbledore would probably release lies instead of what actually happened in that hidden room between him and Professor Quirrell.

"Of course." Ripclaw stands next to him, one hand on Harry's shoulder. He's the one who gave Harry his first knife all those years ago, the blade Harry would have used in the duel with Snape if the coward accepted. "These are prominent people in wizarding society, yes, but also humans in the Ministry who are noted gossips, and some of the ones who work for that paper, and the professors in your school. Not all of them will do something, but some will."

Harry nods slowly. He doesn't know if he can count on the professors to do something, even Professor Flitwick. He cares, and he's half-goblin so he knows a lot, but he also seemed to think that nothing would happen to change Dumbledore's opinions.

"Well, I hope we get some reaction," he says, and goes down a tunnel to work with Toothsplitter at the forge for a while. When he can't do anything productive with his mind, creating with his hands is always the best solution.

* * *

"They want to interview the _amaraczh._ "

Harry looks up when he hears that, mopping sweat away from his face. The name is one that the goblins use for him sometimes, which means "human who can speak." Toothsplitter shoots Harry a glare, and he hastily turns around and pounds a few more times on the blank in front of him, to make sure that she can take over where he's leaving off.

Just because someone is talking about him is no excuse for shoddy work, as Toothsplitter has told him many times.

The goblins who were speaking come to get him a short time later. Harry nods to them, young Jumpgold who he played in the caverns with before he went to Hogwarts and Blackeye, the best healer in the Realm of Song.

"We will want to make sure that these wizards know their limits," Blackeye tells him.

It's smart to have people with him when confronting the wizards, Harry is sure, because humans almost never _do_ know their limits. These people are a blonde-haired woman with huge glasses, and someone with a camera around his neck, and a wizard in robes that Harry has heard described as Aurors' robes. He hasn't had any interaction with Aurors on his own, though.

"This is Harry Potter?" the blonde woman asks the minute she sees him. She smiles hungrily at him and steps forwards. "My name is Rita Skeeter, reporter for the _Daily Prophet_. You can be sure that I'll report the _truth_."

Harry would like to trust that declaration, but he's seen stories in the newspaper that are lies with her name on them. And she's trying to shake his hand as though an introduction is all she needs. Harry stares at her until she steps back.

"Mr. Potter," Skeeter says, and tries to smooth down her robe and recover. "This is my photographer, John Westfall, and my associate, Auror Oliver Kaliman."

"I'm not your _associate,_ woman," the Auror says, and curls his lip.

Harry gives Skeeter a sharp look. Lying in the articles was one thing, as long as it didn't affect him, although it made him think Skeeter and the _Prophet_ in general were dishonorable. But lying to him is a dueling offense.

"I'm here because I'm one of the Ministry people who received that communication you sent out," Kaliman says, and folds his arms. "We just happened to show up at the same time."

"Do you believe us?" Harry asks.

"I think we need some more proof before we can say for certain what we believe." Kaliman tries to glare down Blackeye, but that's like trying to glare down a mountain, as Harry could have told him. After a second, the Auror coughs and looks at Harry again. "And I think you would do well not to let Ms. Skeeter write an article on this."

"How dare you! My articles are the most widely-read—"

"We certainly won't be letting Ms. Skeeter write anything but the truth," Blackeye interrupts, and everyone in the room grows silent as she lets one hand rest on a dagger. "Otherwise, the _Prophet_ can send us another reporter."

Skeeter actually wavers on her feet for a second. Harry thinks she's going back and forth between wanting to lie and wanting to write the article, and he's a little astonished. He didn't think anyone would show the struggle _that_ clearly. At least not if they're an adult human.

Then she nods and throws away the bright green quill she's holding in one hand. "All right. The truth. For as many papers as that's going to sell," she mutters under her breath.

"Oh, trust me," Jumpgold says, looking at Harry and then back at the reporter with a little smile that makes Harry remember when she would try to get away with pushing other goblins into crevices. "You're going to make more money than we will."

* * *

"Is it _really true_ that you got insulted by Professor Severus Snape?"

"Is it _really true_ that Headmaster Albus Dumbledore refused to let you tell the truth about what happened in the hidden rooms under the school?"

"Is it _really true_ that you faced down Voldemort and lived?"

Harry gets the questions as he walks through Diagon Alley and meets other children, as he goes to Knockturn Alley to get rid of some of his own fears, and even sometimes when he goes to Hogsmeade via blood and tunnel to get some of the materials that will aid him in making finer weapons. Harry tries to remind himself, each time, that wizards don't understand how insulting it is to question a goblin's honor or accuse him of lying. He tries as best he can to be polite and smile.

And if sometimes his smiles are wide and people look from them to the knife on his belt and decide to stop questioning him, that's all right. As long as he doesn't make any actual threat, no one has any crimes they can report him for to the Ministry.

He does get one owl from Dumbledore, a huge, heavy, sad letter that describes how Professor Quirrell had to leave the school and go live in some other country with a cousin of his because his reputation in wizarding Britain is ruined. Harry ignores that. As far as he's concerned, Professor Quirrell was never innocent anyway.

And he was in the cursed Defense Against the Dark Arts position. Most people thought he would die or leave at the end of the year anyway. If Harry helped the curse along its way, can anyone really blame him for that?

Professor Flitwick comes to Gringotts himself to see Harry about a fortnight before school starts. Harry comes up from Toothsplitter's forge with soot all over his face and his hands covered with the woven-steel, magical gloves that protect him from the heat, and has to strip them off before he can shake Professor Flitwick's hand. "Sorry, sir," he says, taking a seat on the chair in the corner of Gorgeslitter's office. He's agreed to supervise this meeting. None of the goblins trust Harry's professors very much.

"Quite all right," Professor Flitwick says, and he's smart enough to speak Gobbledegook. "It's amazing and humbling to see a human who wants to learn the ancient goblin arts."

"We have ensured that he was instructed in wizarding magic as well," says Gorgeslitter, and hands both of them thick cups of dirt that has been sung to and blended with water enough that it forms a potent magical brew. Harry drinks in delight. He only became considered old enough for this brew when he got his journeyman status in the winter, and then he didn't get to drink it much before he had to go back to Hogwarts. "There is no reason to give up any advantage when you are a warrior."

"Do you see yourself as a warrior, then, Mr. Potter?" Professor Flitwick asks, and turns to Harry with some surprise. "I thought you were a speaker. A diplomat."

Harry smiles. "Compared to other wizards, I'm a skilled speaker, sir. But that's only because so many wizards don't listen. I'm not as skilled as most of the other goblins in talking between clans, and the wizards don't seem to really _have_ clans." He pauses for a second to let the thickest part of the brew swirl in his mouth, and then adds, "Did you think that my releasing the information about what Dumbledore told me was really _diplomatic_?"

Professor Flitwick shakes his head and takes up a lead biscuit. "No. But on the other hand, I didn't think you would dare do so at all."

Harry stiffens. "What do you mean?"'

"I thought you were afraid of him."

Harry relaxes after a second. It's honorable to speak the truth, and Professor Flitick has never seen him fight. If he thinks that Dumbledore can defeat Harry, then it makes sense to say so. "Well, some people might think that. But after we released the information, then I think you can see I'm not."

"No." Professor Flitwick dips his biscuit in the brew, which impresses Harry a little. Those clashing tastes would be too much for him. "One thing I am afraid will happen is that Hogwarts will become much more uncomfortable for you."

"Why is that, sir?"

"Professor Snape will want his revenge. And although he will take it in infinitely more subtle ways, so will Professor Dumbledore. I am afraid that you might find yourself outcast from your House, even though you made good friends there last year."

Harry shakes his head. "Not all my friends are Ravenclaws, sir. And not all of my friends can be intimidated." He wonders if he should tell Professor Flitwick everything he's thinking, but then he decides that he should. Honesty, and honor, demand it. "And I'm a goblin more than a human. If this somehow made every human in Britain hate me, I'd get over it."

"You will fight Professor Snape and Professor Dumbledore?"

"I would prefer it if we could just duel and get it out of the way. But I will, sir."

Professor Flitwick swallows the last of his biscuit and puts down his tea. "Then I would like to offer you private lessons in the matters of wizarding diplomacy and some history that will explain why Professor Dumbledore is so prominent in Britain, rather the way I offered you some explanation of our government last year."

Harry blinks. "Why, though, sir? You seem to have chosen the course of accepting that you can't fight."

"I did not have any conception of how far you would go, then." Professor Flitwick actually chuckles, his eyes twinkling, which makes Harry think that he must be one of the least serious goblins Harry's ever met. "I didn't realize that you considered yourself a warrior. Now I do. Now I have an ally who can fight with me and shield me if necessary."

 _Oh_. Harry relaxes even more. He understands now. Professor Flitwick seemed like a human most of the time, except when they spoke Gobbledegook and ate goblin sweets in his office. Harry didn't realize that he simply hesitated to fight back because that's not what he's good at.

"What can you tell us, sir?" he asks.

* * *

 _Shall Be Upholden_

" _RAVENCLAW_!"

Harry claps politely as he watches the newest student hop off the stool and walk towards their table. She's a small girl with brilliant blonde hair, so pale that it looks like sunlight, and protruding blue eyes that interest Harry a little, because it makes him wonder if she peers at books or darkness. And—

She has a necklace of corks around her throat.

Harry cocks his head. He doesn't remember hearing about any wizardly or goblin traditions that reference that, but on the other hand, that just makes her more interesting and distinct. And anyone who's willing to stand out in wizarding society is someone he wants to talk to.

"Hello," he says, clearing space beside him for her on the bench. "I'm Harry Potter."

The girl takes the seat, but studies him so much that she nearly falls over her feet. "You don't look like a Harry Potter."

Harry smiles before he can stop himself. "Well, that's my human name. My name in the goblin tunnels is very different, you know."

"That explains it. You can't stop being a goblin even when you're out of the tunnels."

"You seem to have a good grasp of it…"

Harry trails off, but she doesn't speak, instead watching his blade and nodding a little. Then she says, "I'm sorry, were you waiting for my name?"

"If you feel like giving it," Harry says, a little amused. "If you don't, then I can give you a name. But the ones that get chosen by other people don't always speak to our true soul, so I thought I'd let you decide."

The girl smiles at him, and it lights up her whole face. "I like my name well enough. It's Luna Lovegood."

"A name for the moon," Harry says. "That suits you, when you have hair that looks like light and eyes that look like they need light."

Terry Boot hisses next to him. "Harry, don't be so _rude_."

"What? They do."

"Of course they do," Luna says, and Harry is glad to see that she agrees with him and isn't perturbed. "That's the way they are, though. Just the way they grew, without me being in the tunnels." She sighs. "Is it true that you grew up with the goblins?"

"For the real part of my life."

"That must be so fascinating. Tell me, is it true that they have secret treaties with the Nargles?"

* * *

Harry and Luna become fast friends, especially because Luna is the first completely human wizard Harry has met who doesn't need to be taught how to listen. She listens to animals more than to objects, but that's fine. In fact, Harry is always interested in learning how to communicate more, and he likes learning the languages of chirps and tail-flicks and rustles and growls that Luna knows.

She's the one who introduces him to the thestrals. Harry is very impressed by them, and wishes that he'd pursued the faint glimpses he had of them last year. He sometimes saw a winged horse-like shadow trotting through the woods then, but he didn't spend any time in the forest. Detentions and maintaining his listening and just being a goblin in a human castle took up a lot of his time.

"You can only see them if you've seen someone die," Luna announces, right after an intense language lesson where Harry has spent time learning how to distinguish tail-flicks about food from ones that discuss danger.

"I know," Harry says, and looks as gently as he can up at her from the leaves on the forest floor. "Who did you see die?"

There's a long pause, and Harry wonders if it was rude even by Luna-human standards to bring that up. Then again, he only started discussing it because she did.

"My mother," Luna finally whispers. "She died in an experiment when I was nine, and I witnessed it."

"I'm sorry," Harry says gently. "I think it must be hard to have your parents die in front of you. Supposedly mine did, but I really don't remember it."

"Who did you see die?"

"One of the other young goblins. She was called Crisplock. She was dragged down under the earth by one of the Deep Ones, and then I saw the beak take a bite of her. I didn't know it counted as seeing her die all the way until I knew I could see thestrals, though."

Luna sits down on the leaves near him and watches him, head tilting a little to the side. A thestral lips her hair. She doesn't notice. "Who are the Deep Ones?"

"Enemies of the goblins that live under the earth. Well, really they're enemies of everything that disturbs their rest. They used to rule the earth a long time ago, you know. Now they only want to sleep and remember, but sometimes our tunneling wakes them up, and then they strike back."

"Oh. You don't want to move out of the tunnels?"

"Why would we? It's our home."

Luna smiles for the first time. "Daddy and I still live in the house where my mum died. He says it brings us closer to her."

Harry understands exactly what she means. Sometimes he still goes and jumps over the mineshaft where Crisplock died. She and Harry weren't that close as friends, but she was still alive, and that deserves to be acknowledged. "That sounds lovely, Luna. Do you think I could visit you sometime?"

"Oh, yes! Daddy would love to have company. Especially if you could tell him what some of the objects like the horns and skins we have are saying. He tries to talk to them, but he doesn't have the goblin training like you do."

"I've never talked to anything that was taken that directly from an animal," Harry admits. "It's mostly after they've already been polished or carved or made into other objects. But I could try."

"Have you found out about the treaties with the Nargles yet?"

"Not yet. It's possible that we know them under other names, though. That would make sense, Ripclaw says."

"That must be it. I know goblins would never abandon a treaty once you made it. You're an honorable people."

Harry smiles at her. "Why do you know that and no one else does?"

"For the same reasons they don't study the languages of thestrals and birds," Luna tells him earnestly, squeezing his hand for a second. "They're just deaf, and also their minds are filled with mist from how much their teeth hurt. Did I tell you about the Rotfang Conspiracy?"

* * *

 _All Sorrow Fail and Sadness_

"I want you to tell me why you threatened Professor Snape, Harry."

Dumbledore sounds a little broken, a little defeated. Honestly, Harry didn't know what he expected. Once he knew that Dumbledore wasn't honorable and wouldn't defend people, then Harry had no reason to keep honor back. So he can do what he needs to do now, and not listen to the rules of Hogwarts unless he thinks it might be easier to follow them.

"He was bullying Luna."

"Ah, yes, Miss Lovegood," Dumbledore says, in a tone that suggests he disapproves of Luna, too, or maybe Harry's friendship with her. "Well, Harry, you must know that all students have to take potions."

"Until their fifth year, I know. But that doesn't mean he has to bully them."

"Professor Snape's method of teaching—"

"It isn't teaching. It's bullying. And I might be able to ignore it, and other people in my House have told me not to stand up for them, and the Weasley twins can handle it in their own way, and I don't think he ever gets angry at Cedric. But he made Luna _cry_."

Dumbledore looks like he might be one second away from hiding his face in his hands. _Then again,_ Harry thinks viciously, _he does that metaphorically all the time._ "That does not give you the right to put a knife to his throat, Harry."

"Yes, it does. That's literally the punishment for bullying someone young who lost a parent. Sir," Harry adds, in case that makes Dumbledore more likely to listen to him.

"In goblin culture, Harry. You are a wizard."

"And a goblin. Luna lost her mother. Snape didn't have the right to sneer at her about that. And I told him what the consequences were. It was just a threat. I didn't kill him."

"He told me," Dumbledore says, with something like confused anger gathering in his voice, "that you said you would castrate him next time."

"Right. Next time. Now that he's been warned, he shouldn't have to do it anymore."

"Harry, to threaten professors is _unacceptable_."

"Then what's the alternative? Standing by when they torture students? I know that my father did something to Snape that made Snape hate him. And then Snape hates me, and tortures me. And he takes out his bitterness and hatred on people who did nothing to him, too. I think standing back and doing nothing is far more harmful."

Dumbledore's mouth is tight as he looks at Harry. Harry doesn't really care. He knows that the newspaper articles haven't had as profound an effect as he could have hoped, but they've had some. Dumbledore is being questioned in the Wizengamot, and there are rumors that the board of governors is meeting more often, too.

"I can expel you, Harry."

"That might be for the best," Harry agrees. "Then, of course, I'll need to return home, and Gringotts will help me sue to recover my tuition fees."

Dumbledore closes his eyes. "You are causing chaos," he whispers. "It is hardly conducive to the orderly running of a school."

"Neither is hiding a Philosopher's Stone in the school and practically begging someone to go steal it." Harry thinks now that the traps that protected the stone last year were too simple. Oh, most wizarding children wouldn't have his advantages to get through them, but obviously adult wizards and goblins could.

"Have you ever thought about the fact that you don't fit into human society very well?"

"The goblins taught me wizard magic and made sure that I kept up my lessons in English even when I just wanted to speak Gobbledegook," Harry explains. "Now they're making sure that I know more about wizarding government and laws and history. And I do well enough in most classes that aren't Potions and Astronomy."

"I wonder," Dumbledore goes on, "if my approval of this informal custody agreement that the goblins have over you should be rescinded."

Harry met his eyes evenly. "It's not informal."

"Technically, Harry, your Muggle relatives are still your guardians."

"Not by honor," Harry says. "They forfeited the right by blood when they made me sleep in a cupboard and neglected me so much I could wander away and get found by my true people. And not by law."

"Harry, you must know that—"

Harry shrugs. "The right people in the Ministry signed the custody agreement years ago, giving me to the goblins. It has your signature on it, too."

"That is impossible."

"For some reason," Harry says, "the Ministry never pays much attention to goblin paperwork. I don't think that I know anything about why, of course. I am only a simple goblin."

Dumbledore lets him go in the end. Harry doesn't think he has any idea what to do with the situation.

And as long as Snape doesn't bully Luna anymore—and the Ravenclaw students who started to call her "Loony" remember Harry's thoughtful stare and his remarks about how many pieces he could cut bodies up into—then Harry doesn't have to push forwards on it himself.

* * *

"I can hear the hissing in the walls," Luna tells Harry softly after the first Petrification , of Mrs. Norris, and the writing on the wall. "But I can't tell exactly what it's saying, other than it's hungry. And I think it might be insane."

Harry hesitates. "Do you think you could find it and calm it down?"

Luna is silent for a long time before she shakes her head. They're sitting by the lake, waiting for some of the merfolk or the Giant Squid to come talk to them, and the sunlight doesn't make it easy to see that her eyes glitter with tears, but Harry makes them out. He always does. "It's really gone," she whispers. "I think—I think it Petrified Mrs. Norris because it doesn't remember how to kill the ordinary way. If it was really shut in the Chamber of Secrets for hundreds of years, it must be starving. Reptiles can survive long periods of starvation, but…"

Luna leans her head on Harry's shoulder and closes his eyes. Harry strokes her hair. "It's okay," he says. "I know what to do."

Luna blinks at him. "But you said that you didn't hear it talking."

"I know," Harry says quietly. "But I know what to do when someone has gone insane and deserves mercy. I've heard all the songs."

Luna swallows. "Don't tell me about it, please. Don't sing me those songs."

"I won't."

* * *

 _Songs of Yore Re-sung_

Harry speaks to the walls and the floors, and in the end the pipes, to find out where the giant snake is crawling through. They lead him to the bathroom Mrs. Norris was paralyzed outside, which annoys him. Of course he ought to have looked there first, but he thought the snake might be emerging anywhere.

It makes him wonder why the professors couldn't find this place and give the serpent mercy themselves, but then he knows when he thinks about it. They won't listen to Luna when she tells people about the beasts she hears, just because she sings the truth as stories. They won't listen to the serpent that's hungry, or the pipes that cry out their warning when Harry learns to distinguish their voices from those of the water they carry.

Humans so rarely _listen_.

Harry goes down the right pipe, and finds his way to the somberly impressive Chamber of Secrets. He has to get the doors open with a bit of Parseltongue that Luna taught him, but then again, it's also the word that opened the sink. Harry doesn't believe Salazar Slytherin was very imaginative, which pretty much fits with the way most students of that House act.

When the doors open, Harry steps into a partially-flooded room and looks around. There's a huge statue of an ugly human in the corner, and the floor whispers of danger. Harry listens.

 _Basilisk. Basilisk._

Harry nods grimly. He thought it was probably that, what with the Petrification, but he couldn't be sure until now. He enchants the thick blindfold into place around his eyes. Ripclaw taught him blind-fighting, and he has another advantage: the Chamber will tell him where his enemy is.

There is a sudden shifting sound of stone. Harry turns to face it. It's coming from the direction of the statue. Then he hears the sound of scales on the stone, and the floor shrieks in fear for him. Harry draws his blades.

 _You're doing this because the poor thing is insane and has to be put out of its misery,_ he reminds himself, and the battle begins.

* * *

Harry sighs as he lies on his back not far from the basilisk corpse. In the end, it was his smallness and quickness that saved him, along with the voices of the stone and the water and his training in blind-fighting. He kept dodging into corners that the basilisk couldn't reach, and it kept trying to paralyze him—which of course had no effect when he couldn't meet its gaze.

He also made it twist its head sideways and break off both fangs, one against the statue when he ducked behind it, and one against the floor when he stood in one place until the last moment and then rolled out of the way at a helpful flagstone's suggestion. The basilisk could still have hurt him with the stumps of the teeth, but it was a lot less likely.

In the end, Harry got the basilisk into the largest puddle in the room and then asked the water to rise up and bind it in place. The water could only do so for a little while because it was so large, but that was enough for Harry to scramble up its neck and plunge his knives into its eyes, and the brain behind them.

Now, Harry undoes the blindfold charm and looks at the poor, dead, beautiful thing. He feels a slow stirring of anger in his stomach. The basilisk should never have been left here to starve. It should have been fed and honored. He wishes he could have taken it back to the Realm of Song with him, but Luna was right. It was insane, as proven by the way that it kept trying to kill him instead of backing down after he broke its fangs and asking to be spared.

Harry hesitates. There is one way to honor it, although not everyone would agree with him doing this.

He finds the broken fangs and carefully sheathes them in place of two of the knives he lost in the battle. Then he sings a single, deep, throbbing note that stone sometimes responds to.

The flagstone that helped him break the basilisk's second fang convinces the others to help, and a huge ripple travels towards the basilisk and heaves the body up. For a moment, the wave of the floor assumes a sharp edge, and then twirls the body around and comes down like a guillotine.

Harry carefully wraps the head up, too, and then takes it back up with him through the entrance of the Chamber and the pipes, where some water is kind enough to lift him back to the bathroom. A ghost shrieks at the sight of him and dives into a loo there.

"What are you doing with _that_ thing?"

"I'm going to bury one of the fangs in a secret grave, make one fang into a weapon, and hang the head on the wall to honor a fallen enemy," Harry explains. It's more usually done with goblin claws, true, and the head-hanging has been replaced in modern times by more discreet hair, but no one can say he isn't being traditional.

"Oh." The ghost sighs. "That sounds better than just not being honored at all."

"I can try to come up with something for you," Harry offers. "If you fight me so that it can really be honoring a fallen enemy."

The ghost smiles at that. "I'd like that! Did you know, no one has ever asked me how I died before, or how I'd like to be remembered? My name is Myrtle."

Harry listens for a while, until he remembers that he still has to get the basilisk's head and fangs to a good hiding place, and then he bids Myrtle farewell and leaves the bathroom.

* * *

The torches and the wailing are solemn as the goblins wind through the Realm of Song into a place that's punctuated by crystal pillars and a single large, sparkling purple geode in the center of them. Harry carries the basilisk head, and he walks in the center of the procession. Gorgeslitter and the others were indeed impressed by his intention to honor the basilisk in the traditional way, but they said that if he did, he had to do _everything_ traditionally.

No matter how heavy the head is.

The fang that Toothsplitter helped Harry forge into a new dagger with a silver hilt and silver tipping the broken end hangs from his belt. Harry buried the second fang in the Forbidden Forest, after thinking about it for a while. The basilisk's head will spend eternity in the Realm of Song, but he thinks that perhaps the basilisk would have liked living in sunlight and fresh air, too, after spending so long in a cavern. So the Forest it was.

Now, Harry has to prove that he killed the basilisk in the proper way, and that he is indeed honoring his enemy in the proper way.

"I battled this basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets beneath Hogwarts," he says, grimacing a little as the English name of the school breaks the smooth flow of Gobbledegook. "It was insane and starving, and I gave it mercy on the request of a friend. Stone and water helped me, but it was my daggers I drove into its eyes. I buried one fang. I carry one fang. I will hang its head here, if the earth approves. Thus I remember my enemy while I walk the earth, and while I wield my weapons, and while I draw breath in the Realm of Song."

The cavern around him is still, and Harry is afraid for a second that he did something wrong, or the Realm just doesn't think this is a worthy kill. But then the dirt and stone in front of him mold up, and thrust up, and a new crystal pillar arises. There's a delicate, lacy, but incredibly strong projection of stone in front of him now, and Harry smiles and steps forwards.

He hangs the basilisk head on the crystal pillar, which grows further and further, lofting the head almost to the height of some of the oldest kills in the grove. The goblins of Harry's clan around him throw back their heads and let out a single, massed yell of one of the Sacred Words, no longer used in ordinary, everyday Gobbledegook.

" _WARAZCASAAR!_ "

It's the cry to a fallen, honored enemy, and Harry joins in. Then he takes up one of the torches, and holds that in his left hand while drawing the fang-dagger with his right hand.

"My next kill will be with your tooth," he tells the basilisk's head. "Thus you will thrive and carry forwards the process of death and life, and I will know that it is partially your kill, too."

Toothsplitter puts her hand on his shoulder and squeezes, hard. Harry beams up at her. It's the loudest approval she's ever given him.

Then they walk back out of the Realm of Song, to the Darkness Feast that is waiting. Harry smiles. In a few days, Luna has invited him over for Christmas. The papers are printing more sympathetic articles to him, and Snape hasn't dared bully anyone, including Luna, for nearly a month.

It's really wonderful to know that he isn't going to be lost in the world of humans, or lose his identify among the humans, the way he used to think he would.


	5. The Dragon-Headed Door

**Title:** The Dragon-Headed Door  
 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.  
 **Pairings:** None, gen  
 **Content Notes:** AU (Harry raised by goblins), humor, angst, violence, present tense  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Wordcount** : 5400  
 **Summary:** The second half of goblin-raised Harry's second year and the first half of his third year at Hogwarts. Featuring cursed diaries, humans who don't take a hint, starving dogs, and werewolves who for some reason want to keep it a secret. Oh, and what's probably the beginning of the next goblin rebellion.  
 **Author's Notes:** This is one of my "From Samhain to the Solstice" fics for this year and is the sequel to "Music Beneath the Mountains" and "In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke." The title of the fic and section titles are from Tolkien's poems "The Shores of Faery and "The Last Voyage of Earendel."

 **The Dragon-Headed Door**

 _Gateway of the Moon_

Harry frowns at the door that stands in front of him. It's not one that he's ever seen before, but then again, he hasn't come this far back in the Realm of Song, either. He mostly stays in the caverns and ravines near the surface.

But this morning he found a river of liquid mercury, which pleased him so much that he cast some protection spells and followed it. He expected to find the headwaters in a lake of pure silver or someone's forge. He didn't expect the mercury to be running from under a door.

It's an _enormous_ door, the kind of thing the Deep Ones would have built if they could build. The edges are hewn roughly out of basalt, but otherwise it looks like a giant boulder just set in the middle of a gap in the rock.

Well, the edges and the dragon's head sticking out of the middle are probably carved, Harry has to concede. He takes a little step to the side to see the dragon's head better. It reminds him of the basilisk's that still hangs in the grove of honored enemies, but this is made entirely of stone. It has enough spikes that he thinks it's meant to be a Hungarian Horntail. The eyes are closed and the muzzle projects forwards and fangs are visible around the edges of the mouth. Harry knows goblins could have created it, but it isn't like his people to be this crude.

He already tried to use a few wizard spells on it, and to speak to the stone and hear back from it in the language of the goblins. Neither helped. The stone is aware, but it's a _sleeping_ awareness, Harry thinks. He doesn't know how to wake it up.

Thoughtful, he goes back up towards the surface. Someone has to know what this thing is and how to open the door.

* * *

"You should not go near that door."

Harry carefully examines Toothsplitter's face. It's not often that the Master Smith who raised him to journeyman a year ago speaks so seriously. And a warning of danger is not usually given, not when that would be an insult to another goblin's fighting prowess. "Why not?" Harry asks, he thinks sensibly enough.

Toothsplitter sighs and puts down her hammer. Harry sits up from the edge of the carven stone seat where he's been watching her work. It's _grave_ , then.

"I know you think the Deep Ones are the major enemies of goblins in the Realm of Song," Toothsplitter begins. She pours him a mug of cool, gold-accented water. Harry accepts eagerly, and watches as Toothsplitter drinks from her own stone cup. He can see swirls of yellow near the top of hers. "But there were are other enemies."

"Are or were?"

Toothsplitter toasts him with her mug. "They are both. We sealed them behind that door long ago, and so they only _were_ our enemies, in a sense. But we couldn't kill them. We had to put them to sleep. So they are."

Harry sips thoughtfully from his cup, and appreciates the gold swirling around his mouth. He likes it better in drinks than in solids like biscuits. "I can appreciate that. But why is the door left unguarded?"

"Most young goblins never venture that far into the Realm of Song, Harry. You know that."

It still makes a warm _carazah_ spring to life in Harry's chest that Toothsplitter and the others consider him a goblin. He finishes the water and nods. "Okay. Can I tell anyone else about this?"

"We do not want other youngsters getting ideas."

"I meant my friend Luna, at Hogwarts."

"Oh, the one who listens to animals." Toothsplitter thinks about it while she strokes her forge, which is murmuring complaints about being left unused for so long in the middle of the afternoon. "Yes, I think that would be acceptable. But keep in mind that the situation is delicate right now, with war in the cave mouth if we don't get straight answers from your Headmaster, so you will still want to warn her not to spread it around."

Harry smiles, and he knows it's sad. "That's okay, Toothsplitter. Most of the time, no one listens to Luna anyway."

* * *

"A dragon-headed door? How exciting!" Luna is bouncing gently on her feet as Harry finishes his story. They're out in the Forbidden Forest, where they've just finished another language lesson with the thestrals. Harry is getting quite good at understanding them now, which makes both him and Luna proud. "I wonder if it's like the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets here."

"I don't know, Luna." Harry casts a Warming Charm. Luna is barefoot and gets uncomfortable when Harry asks her about it, so Harry uses lots of spells. "But probably not. I don't think the enemies behind the door are basilisks, or there would be more basilisk heads in the crystal grove at home."

Luna sniffles for a second. Harry told her about the basilisk's funeral his first day back from hols, and she thought it was the most wonderful thing she ever heard. "But no, I didn't mean that. I mean that someone must have been releasing the basilisk, right?"

Harry opens his mouth to argue that the basilisk was intelligent enough to crawl around the school on its own, then pauses. Luna is right. Why would it only get out _now_ if it could always get out?

Grimly, Harry adjusts the hang of his knife on his belt. That means there's an enemy out there, one he has to defend his humans and his stones and his objects in the school from. All his friends deserve to be safe.

"How are we going to find out if there is?" he asks.

"We have to listen to the animals," Luna says earnestly. "Did you know that spiders are afraid of basilisks? They're mortal enemies. We can ask them about it."

"I don't think you speak the language of spiders, though, do you?" That was one reason they had stayed away from the Acromantulas in the Forest so far, because Luna had admitted, a little ashamed, that she didn't speak their tongue.

"Silly." Luna beams at him. "All we have to do is learn it."

Harry doesn't really know why people bully Luna and say she's stupid. She has the most common sense of any human he knows.

* * *

It actually takes more of the term to learn the language of spiders than Harry thought. It turns out to be full of vibrations that you can only make on a web, and so he and Luna have to study charms to make silk first. And the spiderwebs themselves, unfortunately, aren't the kind of objects that talk to a goblin. Those are the ones like metal and stone and porcelain that were unalive first and come out of the earth. Ones that come right out of living beings tend to be mute.

But once they do start learning, it's so simple that Harry wants to laugh. Luna even told him something last term about her friend Ginny and how she was acting strange, not like she did when they were children together and Luna knew her. The spiders are full of tales about her sneaking around—or, as they put it, vibration to the left-vibration to the right-two quick taps of the four feet in the middle.

So now they're near the entrance to the Chamber in the old bathroom where Ginny comes all the time, waiting for her. Harry doesn't know why the thing that's making her act strange, whatever it is, wants her to keep going to the Chamber when there's no basilisk down there anymore, but it's not as if Snape makes sense on a regular basis, either. So maybe an evil object, or person, or spirit, whichever it is, doesn't have to make sense.

"What are you doing here?"

Harry looks over his shoulder. The ghost, Moaning Myrtle, who he met once before is floating behind him, her arms crossed. She nods to Harry. " _You_ said that you were going to honor me as a fallen enemy. But you never came back to do that."

"I'm sorry, Myrtle," Harry says, and bows to her. Maybe she knows something about goblins, because her eyes brighten in a way that says she knows just how deeply she's been honored. "But you do have to have a battle with me first, so that you can actually be my enemy. Right now, you haven't done that."

"That's right. I remember you saying something about that." Myrtle chews her transparent lip with silvery teeth. "Can I fight you now?"

"Right now, we're waiting for a different kind of enemy. But you can watch the battle if you want. Maybe that'll give you some ideas about how you want to be honored?"

"You're so _nice_ , Harry Potter," Myrtle says, floating up so that she sits on top of one of the cubicles. "No one else has ever been so nice to me." Tears well up in her eyes and dangle there, ready to fall.

"I know, he's very nice," Luna says calmly. "Not many people listen to me or help me, either, but Harry does. It's because he's a goblin, you know."

"By adoption," Harry adds, when Myrtle studies him as if she expects to see that he's a half-goblin like Professor Flitwick. She must not know that much about goblins after all. "But they're my true people."

"If all goblins are this nice, then more power to goblins."

Harry smiles and starts to say something, but then Luna touches his arm. Harry turns around and listens. Yes, Luna's right. Someone's creeping down the corridor, and they're trying to be quiet, but they haven't taken that much care. Any experienced warrior could hear them.

"Excuse us, Myrtle," Harry says politely, taking out his daggers. "We have an enemy to fight."

"Yes, do let me watch!" Myrtle leans forwards with her elbows propped on the top of the cubicle wall and her hands folded under her chin.

Luna moves out and stands in front of the door, while Harry ducks under the sink that has a snake on it. They both agreed it would be best if Ginny saw Luna first, someone she likes and has no reason to hurt, and wouldn't suspect of setting an ambush.

Ginny comes in through the door, and still looks stunned when she sees Luna. She blinks and clutches something under her robes. With a bit of squinting, Harry can make out the hard square edges of something that looks like a book, which he has to admit isn't what he expected. "Luna? What are you doing here?"

"I come here and speak with Myrtle sometimes," Luna says, and for all Harry knows, it's true. There are still strange and wonderful secrets about Luna. He doesn't know everything about his friend. Luna blinks back at Ginny and adds, "What are _you_ doing here, Ginny?"

"I—I need a private place to brew potions. I'm not very good at them, and Professor Snape makes me nervous when he insults them."

Harry frowns. He doesn't share Potions classes with the Gryffindors, and he heard about Snape bullying Neville Longbottom, but he didn't realize it was general bullying with all Gryffindors. He'll have to do something about that.

Then he remembers that Ginny is probably being influenced by some kind of evil thing, and that's the more pressing problem. "Where's your cauldron?" he asks casually, thinking he might be able to get close to her and wave an enchanted knife that would disrupt the spell. "I'll help you get set up."

"Um, um, it's shrunken and in my pocket." Weasley's eyes are darting anxiously back and forth between him and Luna, and she has one hand on something in her pocket that's probably not a cauldron. The square thing that looks like a book, Harry thinks. "I prefer privacy, really, so could you…"

"We know that you have Wrackspurts in your head, Ginny," Luna says, a lot more gently than Harry would think she could. "We're just trying to help you get rid of them."

Weasley's eyes grow desperate, and she pulls out the book and hurls it at their heads. Harry pulls Luna to the side, shaking his head when she doesn't duck and the book soars past them to land in a puddle. Weasley is already running away. "Why didn't you duck, Luna?"

"Because I knew you would save me."

Harry sighs. Well, it's true, he has to admit as he goes to pick up the book. It's just not the kind of lesson that _he_ would take from the situation, not when he's been trained in the self-reliant ways of goblins since before he could walk.

He frowns as he turns the book over and sees the initials _T.M.R._ embossed on the surface. That argues that it's not Ginny's book. It sorts of looks like a diary, which probably belongs to this T.M.R. person. Still, when he opens it, it's full of delicate handwriting.

"That's Ginny's handwriting," Luna volunteers, looking over his shoulder.

Harry nods, trusting her impression of it. "Do you want to go tell the professors?" It's not what he would prefer to do, but he's trying to fit better into human culture.

Luna looks at him as if he's a little thick, which Harry does sometimes feel like. "Not when it would get Ginny in trouble. And not when we might have to explain how we learned it."

Harry winces. He hadn't thought of that. Ordinary humans don't believe that animals can really talk. They won't listen to people who claimed that they learned the language of spiders.

He nods again. "Then I'll keep this for right now," he says, and drops the book into a pocket, "until we can determine what to do with it."

* * *

 _East of the Moon_

Harry opens his eyes and stands up with his hands resting on his daggers. There's been something buzzing and nagging at his dreams for a few nights now. He's ignored it because it's elusive and flees when he turns to confront it. This way, it'll have to come out and reveal itself.

And it has, but it's not something Harry would have expected. A boy who looks about sixteen or so stands up from leaning against a dark doorway that is not a place Harry would have imagined when awake. He has a pale face and dark hair that it looks like he spends a lot of time on. "Hello. I thought you would never hear me."

"I heard you, but I didn't understand what you were saying," Harry explains as he studies the boy. He doesn't carry weapons, not even a wand, but he stands as though he's used to fighting. That makes Harry cautious. Either his demeanor is justified or it's arrogance, and either way, in a human, that's trouble.

"Well, then. My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle."

"The owner of the diary?"

"Yes, indeed. And I am most anxious to make your acquaintance…" Riddle lets the words trail off suggestively.

"Sorry, but I'm a goblin, and if you don't know my name yet, I don't think I should give it." That's not a luxury Harry has most of the time, since almost everyone knows who he is the second they see his forehead. But he's going to take advantage of it for all he's worth when he does meet someone who doesn't know.

Not to mention, someone who might be an enemy.

"You're not a goblin," Riddle says, his forehead wrinkling. Harry takes a hard look at it, but he doesn't have runes carved into it that might account for the sense of heavy darkness around them. Too bad. He must be causing this some other way. "Nor a half-goblin. You're too tall."

Harry sighs. It seems that so many wizards fail to understand this. He thinks he's because they're obsessed by blood purity and everyone being _related_ to each other, and don't understand other forms of relation. "I'm an adopted goblin. My parents died when I was young, and the goblins found and raised me."

"So you were raised by non-humans."

The way that last word rolls off Riddle's tongue raises hair all over Harry's body. He drops his hands to the hilts of his daggers but tries to smile to show his teeth. Riddle hasn't been any more insulting than other people—yet. He deserves some warning before Harry attacks. "Yes."

"And you _wanted_ to remain with them?"

Harry shrugs. "Well, like I said, my parents were dead. There weren't any other humans that had any kind of claim to me. Well, technically there were, but we took care of it with some paperwork. Humans don't pay a lot of attention to what they're signing when it comes from Gringotts."

"You're speaking as if…" Riddle studies him and stands up from his lounging posture against the doorway. He circles around to the side. Harry turns with him. He's too well-trained to let another duelist have the advantage.

"And you're speaking as if you have some kind of grudge against goblins. Let's hear about it." Harry is impatient with human society and its lies most of the time, but doubly so now. Does Riddle really think he can fool Harry about his nature?

"You're speaking as if you're proud of it," Riddle says, which at least does bring the answer out into the open, although it doesn't make Harry any fonder of him. "You're a _wizard._ "

"And a goblin."

"You're human."

"And a goblin."

Riddle looks the way that some of Harry's Housemates do when they realize that Harry can just ask his sheets to make themselves and they'll do it. "But you're talented in _magic._ "

"And a goblin." Harry is starting to wonder if Riddle's fallen prey to the common misconception that humans have more magic, or some fundamentally more powerful kind of magic, than goblins. It's not entirely unknown to Harry, although it's still stupid as whistling when you stand under a ledge of echostone.

"You will stop saying that. You will give me your answer. _What is your name_?"

The words echo in Harry's ears, and they might sway him, but he's had practice at throwing off the whispering blandishments of the Deep Ones by now. He draws his daggers. "Get out of my head, Tom Riddle."

"You should call me by my other name," Riddle breathes, although Harry doesn't think he imagined the flash of fear in those dark eyes when the other boy's attempt to control Harry failed. "The name that I have made myself feared under."

"The Bloke Who Babbles Too Much?"

Riddle lunges at him with a snarl, but then the dream world dissolves, and Harry finds himself back in his bed. The diary has squirmed out from under the bed, though, and is lying on the pillow next to him, smoking furiously.

Harry has had about enough of the thing, and he thinks that he doesn't need to keep it around to figure out how it influenced Ginny Weasley anymore; the diary's ability to invade his dreams pretty much proves how that happened. He takes his daggers and stabs the bloody thing.

* * *

 _O'er the Darkness_

"Now, Harry, I want you to tell me exactly what happened when you stabbed this diary that you claim was speaking to you."

Harry sighs. He's been over this with Headmaster Dumbledore seven times now. And they have Luna's testimony and even the teary words of Ginny Weasley, who apparently broke away from Riddle's enchantment the instant Harry destroyed the diary.

"I stabbed the diary with my daggers," he says anyway, because fighting a human who keeps asking silly questions is beneath him. "It started to smoke, and a large hole appeared in the center of it."

"And your bed began to smoke, too."

"Yes. Then I stabbed the diary again to be sure, and black blood, or at least a substance _like_ blood, began to come out of it." Harry tried to compare the black liquid to coal tar at first, but everyone except Professor Flitwick made it clear they had no idea what he was talking about, so Harry gave up. Honestly, don't they pay attention to _anything_ important, like mining?

"But your bed caught on fire."

That appears to be the point that Dumbledore is hung up on. Harry gives him the most patient look he can. "Well, yes. It had a magical fire burning in the middle of it. Or at least the diary was smoking, and the diary was lying on the bed, so—"

"Why did the diary smoke when you stabbed it with a dagger?" Snape interrupts. Harry has no idea why he's here at all. At least Professor Flitwick is the Head of His House and Professor McGonagall is Deputy Headmistress, but Dumbledore apparently invited Snape because he's afraid to be the only annoying person in the room.

Harry just looks at him for a long moment. Technically he doesn't have to answer Snape at all. He issued a challenge to a duel last year and Snape refused it. Harry doesn't have to speak with cowards, under goblin law.

"Harry." Dumbledore sounds an inch away from sighing. "Please answer Professor Snape."

In the end, Harry shrugs and does so. He supposes that it won't cost him more pride or dignity than he's already lost. "The diary was Dark magic, and one of my daggers is made from a basilisk fang. I assume it was the potency of the venom that ate through it."

Snape actually jerks back and turns pale. Harry raises a curious eyebrow. Then he remembers that he threatened Snape with his daggers on more than one occasion, and grins. Yes, Snape's probably thinking about how he could have been stabbed with a basilisk fang himself.

"Harry," Dumbledore sighs, aloud this time, and from the expression on his face, he knows what he's going to say next will do no good. "I _must_ ask you not to carry basilisk fangs around."

"Where does it say I can't in the School's Charter, sir?"

Dumbledore struggles for a long moment. Harry thinks it's against his own impulse to reach over the desk and slap Harry. That's too bad, though, because he earned this when he lied and made excuses. Harry waits, face fixed in the angelic expression that is making Professor Flitwick cough behind his hand.

Dumbledore finally says, "It doesn't. Nonetheless—"

Professor McGonagall decides to add herself to the annoying list then. Harry wants to shake his head mournfully. He could have warned her that too great a commitment to the rules would get her in trouble. "The Charter _does_ say that lethal weapons cannot be carried, Mr. Potter."

"You mean, other than wands?"

" _Mr. Potter_ —"

"A wand can cast the Killing Curse," Harry says, and keeps his eyes very wide as he reaches up to flip the fringe back from the scar. "I have reason to know that." He waits for the count of two, to be effective, before he flips the fringe back down and continues in his normal voice. "Besides, Professor, if you look at the Charter, you'll find that it says _human_ students can't carry lethal weapons. I'm a goblin."

"There are no exceptions for non-human students," Professor McGonagall says, at the same time that Snape mutters, "You are not a goblin."

"I've already given you my answer to that, which you aren't courageous enough to accept," Harry told Snape, and faced Professor McGonagall with a faint smile. "As a matter of fact, Professor, there are. A half-troll student can have a club, for instance, and half-Veela students are allowed to Transfigure their hands into claws. It's cultural."

"Whether it is appropriate according to the Charter or not," Dumbledore interrupts, his voice stern, "the fact remains that you cannot carry a basilisk fang made into a dagger around this school, Harry."

"Oh, you can take my weapons."

"Thank you for under—"

"If you duel me for them, and win." Harry stood up and fell into an expectant stance. "Of course, my weapons shall be my daggers. You can have your wand if you want. It doesn't make much difference to me."

" _Insolent_ ," Snape breathes, while Dumbledore just looks despairing.

"You are human, Mr. Potter." Professor McGonagall says it with a little sigh, as if she doesn't really expect Harry to listen to her and might not blame him if he doesn't.

"If you wanted me to stay human, you should have left me with humans who would take care of me and call me by name and not make me sleep in a cupboard and care about me enough that I couldn't just wander off on my own when I was six years old."

Professor McGonagall stares at him. Then she turns to face Dumbledore. "The Muggles he was with did that to him?"

"I don't see how it matters now, Minerva." Dumbledore just flaps a hand without taking his gaze from Harry. Harry conceals a vicious smile as he watches the disapproval creep across Professor McGonagall's face. Dumbledore just lost the loyalty of one of the most important people to him, and he didn't _notice._

"Right now," Dumbledore goes on, "we're settling the question of what happened when Mr. Potter stabbed that diary."

Harry shrugs. "I don't see how it matters. It burned up. It started a fire that I put out without the Ravenclaw Tower being damaged. The end. Why does it _have_ to be more involved than that?"

This time, Dumbledore sighs as if it physically pains him to give up information. "Because Tom Marvolo Riddle is the mortal name of Lord Voldemort."

Harry blinks, then shrugs. "Well, he should put stronger defenses on his bits of soul or whatever he's leaving lying around."

Dumbledore's face gets pinched. "Mr. Potter—"

Harry points to Professor McGonagall and Snape. "What? You didn't want them to know about this? But I think it's obvious. After all, there was a piece of soul behind my scar that the goblins removed, so it stands to reason that he probably left more than one scattered around."

The conversation goes rapidly downhill from there.

* * *

"And he said directly that you are lying?" Toothsplitter is leaning forwards with a fanatical light in her eyes.

"Yes, he did." Professor Flitwick looks upset as he sips his cup of _pure_ molten copper. Harry is beyond impressed with his professor's digestion. "Albus seems to believe that the impact of this knowledge is going to change the entire game."

"Game?" Harry blinks.

"Excuse me, Mr. Potter. The political game. The engagement of opponents on the political battlefield," Professor Flitwick adds, since both Harry and Toothsplitter have puzzled expressions.

"Games are things children play," Toothsplitter points out sharply. "They have nothing to do with lives or politics. If this professor thinks that he may play with goblin lives, he will find out the difference between us and children quickly."

Flitwick sighs and nods. "I'm afraid that humans think differently and frequently confuse goblins with children in way that have nothing to do with our size, Madam Toothsplitter." Harry is pleased by the use of "our." "They assume that we think about the world in simple ways and that means that we can be fooled."

"But—thinking simply means it's hard to fool you," Harry says. He wonders if this is another one of those confusing human things, because it seems impossible that smart adult humans don't understand something Harry has known since he was six. "Because you look at their complicated explanations and you pierce through them and see to the heart."

"Some people think complicated is better." Professor Flitwick appears pained. "Or that anyone who doesn't use the same metaphors and the same kinds of approvals and governments that humans do is primitive and backward."

"Let them think that." Toothsplitter flicks her claws together. "That means they will be all the more unprepared when war comes upon them."

"It is to be war, then?" Professor Flitwick glances back and forth between them in resignation. "This is something that cannot be avoided?"

"Why would we want to avoid it?" Harry points out. "They have accused me of lying. They tried to control a goblin. The school as a whole is run by people who don't respect goblins and think that their tangled explanations should control my life. This is something we _should_ address."

"But the other goblin rebellions haven't—worked out well for our people."

Toothsplitter smiles, revealing the teeth she's sharpened into fangs since Harry came back for the summer. Everyone prepares for war in their own way. "You've been reading too much of the human side of history, Master Filius. You should ask yourself what those rebellions were meant to achieve."

"Respect, I thought. But the humans don't show it even now."

"Oh, that generation at the time did," Toothsplitter says. "It's just that humans live such short lives they need to be taught anew every few decades."

Flitwick looks pained. "I didn't think I would live through another goblin rebellion."

"Well," Toothsplitter says. "Now you have. And what side are you going to choose?"

Harry looks at Flitwick in some curiosity to see how he'll answer that. His loyalties aren't as simple as Harry's. He's a half-goblin, and Harry is wholly goblin, and so Harry can't blame Flitwick if he feels torn, he supposes. But it would be brilliant to be on the same side as him.

Flitwick looks back and forth between them for a moment, and then shakes his head. "One can hardly say that Mr. Potter didn't give the Headmaster fair warning. I'm on your side in this war, until the end." And he repeats it in Gobbledegook to prove he means it.

Harry is smiling as he gets up to shake hands with Professor Flitwick. "I promise that you're not going to regret it, sir."

"I hope not, either." Flitwick's hand squeezes his, hard. Then he sits back and picks up his cup of molten copper again. "Oh, by the way, Mr. Potter, Professor Dumbledore was most interested in what you did with the diary you destroyed."

"I found a safe place for it," Harry says innocently. He avoids Toothsplitter's eye, but then again, she would say it was safe enough as long as he didn't get caught, and Harry didn't.

* * *

He followed that river of mercury that flowed up to the dragon-headed door the day that began the summer holidays. He stood before it, studying it, for long moments. Then he spoke the words that would guarantee that it could open.

Those words aren't a secret. Young goblins can learn them if they want. Of course, if a young goblin uses them and the door opens and swallows them, that proves they shouldn't have used them after all.

The dragon-headed door swung open for Harry. He didn't look into the darkness behind it or wait for something to come forth. Instead, he threw the diary into the gap and then spoke the words that closed the door again. It seemed to him that it moved much more reluctantly back into place than it opened.

But the important thing was that the door had accepted the diary, and so had the enemies of the goblins that lived behind it. It's probably true that those things still hate goblins, but they would hardly accept the dominance of the arrogant shade that lived in the diary, assuming anything is left.

And Harry truly doesn't think there is. Basilisk venom is good at destroying things.

Still, he leaves the door behind with a lighter heart.


	6. The Dragon-Headed Door 2

Thank you again for all the reviews!

 _Gathering Tide of Darkness_

"Harrikins! Didn't you hear the news? Should you be alone without—"

"A guard, at least? We thought you'd have at least a dozen Aurors following you."

Harry turns around to grin at Fred and George. He and Luna have come to Diagon Alley to buy their supplies for the upcoming school year, and he's not really surprised to see the Weasley twins there, too. They do seem to get everywhere. "Hullo, Fred and George. Aurors are like the wizards who guard against Dark Arts, right?"

"Yes, of—"

"Course they are." Fred looks chiding. "Don't try to tell us that you're stupid, Harrikins. You must realize what an Auror is."

"I don't pay attention to things I don't need to pay attention to," Harry tells them, which is only the truth but makes them look at him slowly and carefully anyway. Harry shakes his head in amusement. "There are so many other voices in the world to listen to, and I have my daggers, you know."

"You have to pay attention to this, Harrikins." Suddenly Fred and George's voices are low and they're both crowding around him, which is worrisome. They sound almost as low as the stones that speak at home when they're trying to whisper secrets so not everyone can hear. "Sirius Black is on the loose."

"Who?" Harry asks brightly, when there's an ominous pause and it's evident that they expect him to shriek madly and fall on the ground.

Fred sighs. "He was the one—"

"Who betrayed your parents to You-Know-Who," George finishes.

Harry is about to say that he doesn't know who before he remembers that ridiculous idea about not uttering Voldemort's name. He shrugs a little. "All right. And?"

"He's broken out of prison," George says.

"He's coming after you," Fred says, and even though he twists his face into a ghoulish mask, Harry thinks he's serious, and worried. "He probably wants to finish the job. He didn't get to kill you the first time and neither did his master, so he wants to track you down, see?"

"That doesn't worry me."

"Harry, the Blacks got up to some _terrible_ Dark magic," George says.

"George, you don't think anything is terrible."

"So consider who's saying it." Fred narrows his eyes at Harry, and his voice is sharp. "We don't want him to capture you. None of the Aurors have been able to find him yet. That means you _have_ to be careful. He could pop up right behind you and use some spell that you don't need to counteract."

"That's assuming I don't stab him in the groin with a basilisk fang before he can," Harry counters calmly.

"You have a _basilisk_ fang?" George exclaims, and goes back to looking more like himself, which is a relief. Harry doesn't know what to do with serious twins. "Wicked!"

"We heard rumors, but we didn't know." Fred stares in respect at the silver-tipped fang that Harry pulls out of his belt, but doesn't try to touch it, which pleases Harry. It means that his lectures about listening to objects must be getting through to the twins. "Does it talk to you?"

"Everything talks," Harry points out. The lectures haven't sunk _all_ the way in, obviously. "But I must admit this dagger is pretty quiet. Most of the time it mutters to itself about old stone and the pain of growing out of the gum of a basilisk's mouth. And stillness. I think the basilisk spent a lot of time sleeping."

"Maybe it will be effective against Sirius Black, at that," Fred admits, and then straightens and looks down at him. "But as Percy the Prefect would say, no going off on your own, Mr. Potter."

"Oh, is Percy a prefect?" Harry asks.

"Don't worry, he'll tell you himself!" George exclaims, and waves their brother down at the same moment as Luna comes out of the potions ingredients shop with a number of live beetles that she intends to name and raise, she tells Harry, instead of letting them become the base of potions as they were intended to be. Harry approves.

He also approves of Percy's prefect badge, which has a lot of stories to tell about exciting midnight chases through the corridors. Maybe they'll even find some new secret passages that way.

* * *

 _Stands A Lone_

Harry stands up with a frown when he sees the darkness show up outside the train compartment he and Luna are in and feels the whole train start to slow down. That shouldn't happen. And neither should the sharp groaning of metal that means the train is feeling cold.

Harry only knows a few creatures who could cause cold like that, and only one who would be roaming around outside the train, or on the train.

Dementors, looking for Sirius Black.

Luna shivers next to him and huddles back into a corner of the compartment. Harry glances at her in quick concern, but she manages to smile at him even though her lips are blue.

"It's all right, Harry. I'm sure that they must have good in them somewhere, like all creatures. And they don't _mean_ to cause me to relive the death of my mother." But Luna buries her face in her arms, and her brave words trail off.

Harry turns around to face the door. That's it. He's going to get the Dementors off the train, for Luna.

He reaches out and puts his hand on the wall of the compartment, near the door. He ignores the groaning and shrieking of the cold metal and the memories that want to rise up in his mind. Honestly, he doesn't have that many bad memories. Most of them are from before the time he became a goblin, and he's expert at ignoring that because that was when he wasn't really _alive,_ as he sees it.

He speaks through the door to all doors. They don't know him as well as the sinks and stones at Hogwarts do, because he hasn't spent as much time on the Hogwarts Express, but he introduces himself politely and asks if they'll help him.

The doors are old, but that just means refined, and polite, and civilized. They agree with him that no one should be subject to Dementors, and that includes even the students on the train, who don't always treat the doors well and slam them around and try to open them when they're locked. A low song vibrates up and down the train.

Then all the doors slam at once.

That means they close on a lot of reaching Dementor arms and fingers. Harry grins and sits back down in his seat as he listens to Dementors shriek. Then the doors open and slam shut again, and are joined by the windows, who know a good thing when they see it. Dementor faces get slammed as the windows rattle in their panes. Dementor robes get caught and shredded. Children are protected from Dementors who were halfway into the compartments.

"Thank you," Harry says, with a grateful bow of his head in the direction of their compartment door. He's already noticed that Luna's lips are a normal color and that she's laughing in delight as she reaches out an arm to slide her fingers along the sill of their window.

The doors sing back in response, and it isn't long until the lights come on again and then the train begins to move.

"That was wonderful," Luna says. "I don't know why more wizards and witches don't listen to objects."

"They just don't listen in general," Harry says gently. "They don't listen to animals, either, and they don't listen when I tell them I'm a goblin, and they don't listen when you try to tell them what you hear."

"It's so sad," Luna sighs.

Harry sits down next to her and puts his arm around her. "It is, but it's not our problem to solve."

* * *

 _Moonlit Pebbled Strand_

"Aren't you afraid because Sirius Black is after you?"

That's the little Weasley girl, the one who was possessed by the diary last year. Harry doesn't blame her for that, but he's a little surprised that she came to talk to him, because mostly she seems to be scared of him. He smiles and lowers his book onto the library table. "Weren't you afraid of that diary last year?"

Weasley flushes bright red and glances around frantically to see if anyone's listening. But of course no one is. There's an epidemic of not listening, something that Harry's been thinking more and more about since his conversation with Luna on the train.

When she sees that, Weasley seems to be a little calmer. She sits down in the chair across from him and looks at him earnestly. "Not really. I thought I could handle it."

"That's sort of like me and Sirius Black," Harry says, nodding. "Except that I know I can handle him, and so I'm not afraid."

He tries to go back to his book, but Weasley is sitting there, shifting back and forth the way humans do when they're trying to make up their minds. Harry decides he should wait patiently. He always has the complaints of the chair that Weasley is moving back and forth in to entertain him. It's an old chair, and it mourns the last days when people sat calmly in it and there was the quiet turning of pages and no one tried to use it as a ladder to reach the top shelves.

"Is there something you need from me?" Harry asks, because he thinks it must be a need. No one would have sought him out if they just _wanted_ something from him. Most people know better by now.

"Um. Can you teach me?"

"Teach you what? I've taught some people to understand objects, but they have to listen to them first—"

"I don't think I could do object magic. Not after the diary."

Harry puts aside his book and concentrates more fully on Weasley. That's something with an amount of insight that he rarely hears from a human. "Then what is it?"

"I want to know how to defend myself. So I don't have to roam around cringing in fear or waiting for the next disaster to happen and fall on my head."

Harry nods thoughtfully as he thinks about it. He can understand why someone would want to be free of that fear, even though it's been so long since he felt it himself that he doesn't remember it. "Okay. Do you want lessons with the daggers? I can give you the same kind of training with dull blades that I learned. You can't have metal blades until you're better with them, though."

"That's more than I expected. Do you really think I can learn to handle daggers?"

Harry considers her carefully. She's small and lean, although she's taller than most goblins even at this age. "You have a knife-fighter's build. You have to be small and quick. But you need to make sure that you're really _committed_ to learning this. It will mean not studying magic as much and lots of exercise and learning how to swim."

"Swim? Why?"

"Because if you want to last in a fight, you'll need stamina, and that's a good source of exercise. And because if something goes wrong when you're fighting, it's good to have an alternate escape route."

"That assumes I'm fighting next to a body of water, though."

"Oh, of course," Harry assures her. "But you might be, you know. It's not as though you'll have the same fights everywhere."

After a moment, Weasley smiles, tentatively. "So when do we begin?"

* * *

"The water's _cold_!"

"I know, but that just means that you need to learn how to endure it!" Harry calls as he watches Ginny surface and swim to the edge of the lake.

It took him a while to get used to calling her by her first name instead of her last one. He pointed out that he wasn't really close with any of the Weasleys and he should be able to call her by her last name without it being confusing, and she pointed out Fred and George. Harry admitted it, but he was a little surprised. He hadn't thought Fred and George had told their siblings about him.

It just seemed that friendships with goblins weren't things wizards bragged about.

"Aren't there spells that you use to make the water warmer?" Ginny's clinging to the shore and shaking her wet hair out of her face, looking at him imploringly.

"I suppose I could use some," Harry says, and casts a Warming Charm on her. Ginny sighs and relaxes cramped hands, and then goes back to swimming, which Harry is glad for. He doesn't want her to get used to being coddled or anything. That's not what makes a good knife-fighter, or any other kind.

"Didn't you use some when you were learning to swim?" Ginny asks, ducking her head under the water.

"No, I was swimming in molten metal and underground, mostly. It was plenty warm."

Ginny stares at him with her mouth open, which makes a little wave slap her in the face and cause her to splutter. Harry smiles at her and calls, "That's why you need to keep your mouth shut when you're swimming!"

Ginny swims back and forth another turn in their private little course, which Harry made by asking some stones to bob up and down, shutting off one part of the lake from the rest. Then she says, "You must have lived a fascinating life."

Harry blinks. It's the first time someone's ever said that. He shrugs. "I suppose it was, but to me it just seems normal. It's the kind of life that a goblin should live, although I had to have extra lessons because I'm a wizard, too."

"Will you tell me about it?"

Harry smiles, pleased. He and Luna trade stories, but they're mostly about the different languages that they can speak and the different creatures they can listen to. It's nice to have someone who wants to know about the other parts. "Sure!"

And he sits on the lakeshore and tells Ginny about them, while the sky gets softer and darker above them.

* * *

 _Stretches On For Ever_

"I heard Sirius Black attacked the portrait that guards the Gryffindor common room! Aren't you afraid?"

Harry blinks at the Hufflepuff boy asking him the question. Harry recognizes him a little; his name is Ernie or something, and Harry thinks they're in the same year. But the question doesn't make much sense. "No, why would I be? I'm not a Gryffindor."

"But he _attacked_ the portrait! He got into the school!" Ernie Something's eyes are wide, and he glances over his shoulder as if he thinks that Black is going to come up behind him and attack him, too.

Harry shrugs. "Either he's so stupid that he doesn't realize I'm not a Gryffindor and so I don't need to be afraid of him. I can defend myself against anyone _that_ stupid."

"Or?" Ernie ducks and cowers this time, but the only thing moving is a shadow on the wall as someone passes nearby a suit of armor and shoves it a little. Harry winces. He almost feels bad, watching how much of a coward Ernie is.

"Or he has some cunning plan that's going to take him a long time to execute. By the time he gets around to me, I'll be ready to execute _him_."

Ernie gives him a glance that's almost as frightened as the one he gave the shadow, and runs away. Harry sighs. It's hard, sometimes, being the only goblin in a school full of humans. Professor Flitwick is a comfort, and so is Luna, and Ginny is coming along well under his tutelage and is almost ready to start handling metal daggers, but at times like this, Harry can feel just how different he is from everyone else.

* * *

"I won't have him scaring my badgers with stories!"

Harry is in the Headmaster's office again, summoned there this time by a furious Professor Sprout. Ernie-the-scared went and spread stories in which Harry is going around trying to frighten people on purpose, evidently. Harry patiently sits in a chair and waits for the conversation to get around to him.

"Is it true that you told Ernie Macmillan that you were prepared to commit murder, Mr. Potter?" Dumbledore sounds weary. If he hadn't already earned no grace from Harry, Harry would pity him. If dealing with ordinary students is hard, it'll be much harder for him once the war begins.

"No. I just said I would execute Black if he came after me."

"That is the same as being prepared to commit murder!" Professor Sprout is hanging onto her hat to keep it from flying away in the force of her outrage. Harry shakes his head at her. Imagine having to spare one hand to hang onto something like that. It would make you _useless_ in battle.

"No. Execution and murder are different things. Otherwise, you wouldn't have punished Sirius Black by sticking him in Azkaban, would you? You would say that he was the same thing as a Dementor who Kisses someone."

"What do you know about Sirius Black, Mr. Potter?" Dumbledore is suddenly focused intently on him.

"Oh, that he's a traitor and he broke out of Azkaban and he's being hunted by Dementors." Harry shrugs. "That's it, really."

"We do not want you to go after him, Mr. Potter, in an attempt to secure revenge for your parents."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because revenge appears to be an important part of goblin culture."

Harry is torn between happiness that they finally accept he's a goblin and exasperation at the way Dumbledore is approaching it. "With all due respect, someone is supposed to get her own revenge. My parents are dead and they can't win it. If Black does something to me, I'll execute him and that will be that. But other goblins help with someone's revenge only when there are factors of power disparity and it's really an insult to all goblins."

It's an attempt to warn Dumbledore, not that he deserves to be warned, but it streaks right past him. He's still staring intently at Harry. "You do not intend to hunt down Sirius Black?"

"No."

Dumbledore seems to slump a little. "Then you really do not care about your family."

"I will have you know that I know all there is to know about my family, and all the different ways to honor them, with word and stone and song—"

"I _meant_ your parents, Harry."

Harry shrugs. "Then you should have said. I was talking about my family."

Dumbledore looks tired, and Harry thinks he might have liked to dismiss the whole irritating pile of them from his office, but Professor Sprout interrupts with a shrill voice. "There is still the fact of his threatening my student, Headmaster!"

"Did you threaten Mr. Macmillan?"

"Who?"

"Ernie!" Professor Sprout stabs a finger at him. Harry thinks about telling her to back off if she doesn't want to lose it, but that would probably get taken as a "threat," too, instead of a statement of fact. "You threatened him when you said that you would execute Sirius Black!"

"Yes, but I didn't threaten _him_ ," Harry points out, as patiently as he possibly can.

"I have to say that it doesn't sound as though he did, Pomona." Dumbledore has an anticipatory gleam in his eyes, though, which means he thinks he's found some other way to play the game. Harry wishes he would give that _up_ already. "Mr. Potter, maybe you can tell me something that I haven't been able to understand."

"Yes?" Harry thinks that it's a bit rich for Dumbledore be asking this now, when so far he hasn't made any _attempts_ to understand, but he's willing to try one last time.

"What is it about the Realm of Song that makes you so loyal to it? Most of our students feel a sense of wonder about Hogwarts, and many find their true home here, but I do not think you have."

Harry smiles. "Hogwarts is wondrous, of course. And there are fascinating stones here with a lot to tell, and objects eager to help. But it just can't compare to the Realm of Song."

"Then please tell me about it." Dumbledore leans forwards. Professor Sprout sniffs, and Dumbledore adds, "Tell _us_."

Harry half-closes his eyes, because that always makes his recollections stronger, and lifts his voice in the soft half-chant that is the only goblin song he's willing to sing in front of hostile humans. "It stretches on forever, down and down, through tunnels of basalt and beside lakes of molten gold. Rivers of mercury run through it. You can mine as much iron as you care to, and there is still more. The stone trembles with the half-forgotten music of the Deep Ones, and there are pools of silver that remember the moon that they were banished from long ago.

"And there is our song, the song of the goblins that has echoed here from the morning of days. The sound of the hammer on the forge, and the hand on the axe, and the chisel on the wall, and the water on the ground, and the feet on the earth, and the magic on the words. The tongue we have is ours, and it is what we use to sing, but we hear the voices of the others, as well. Objects and stones and animals and air. Everyone sings here."

The words fade out into the silence of Dumbledore's office, and Harry sighs as he is reminded yet again of sitting in a human building. The words have created a great longing in him to be back in the Realm of Song, where he could dip his hand in silver and sit beside one of the crystal pillars in the grove of enemy heads and know peace.

Dumbledore finally clears his throat. "That was a—powerful explanation," he says in a subdued voice. "You're free to go, Mr. Potter."

It's probably the most sensible thing Dumbledore has ever said. Harry leaves promptly, to give him the encouragement to go on saying such things.

He can still hear Professor Sprout complaining about him threatening her students, but oddly, Dumbledore doesn't answer her.

* * *

 _Where the Shadow Flows_

Harry leans back on his elbow next to the lake. He was supervising Ginny and Luna's swimming training earlier, but both of them have gone to bed now. Harry will join them before too much longer. He's just enjoying the reflection of the stars in the lake and thinking about how they remind him of the reflections of torches in the underground lakes at home.

A whine catches his attention. Harry can't speak animal languages as well as Luna can, but he can recognize the sounds of a dog in distress. He turns and squints, making out a large black dog at last. He almost blends with the night. And he's wagging his tail as he stares at Harry, but he's also posed to run.

Harry grins at him. "Hi, boy. Do you want to come over and sit next to me? I think I still have some bacon left over from lunch." He carries food all the time to practice transforming it into the kind of battle-rations that he'll probably need when the war starts in earnest.

The dog runs straight up to him and tries to lick his face with a giant tongue. Harry laughs and dodges, and then takes out the bacon. The dog gulps it, almost taking his hand with it.

"Whoa, boy!" Harry concentrates hard and then does his best to speak in the wolf language that Luna has also been tutoring him in, ever since she discovered that part of their new Defense professor is a wolf and trying to reach out to people. Harry doesn't know if a dog would be able to understand wolves, but they're related and it's worth a try. _Are you all right?_ he asks, with movements of his ears that he has to make with his fingers.

The dog freezes, staring at him. His tongue hangs out, and he pants and whines, but Harry can't understand anything from the sounds. It's entirely possible that dogs can't speak the dialect of wolves, after all, or else Harry isn't advanced enough to get the message.

"Sorry," Harry says, ruffling the dog's fur on his head. "I've just started those lessons."

The dog licks his face again and whines urgently. Harry looks around, but he doesn't sense the approach of an enemy, which is what he thinks the dog is trying to say. He moves his fingers up to his ears again. _What's your name?_

The dog shrinks back from him with his ears flattened to his head, and then Harry makes out the sound of footsteps. He turns around and smiles as this year's Defense professor walks up to him. "Hello, Professor Lupin."

"Harry." Lupin sounds exasperated with him sometimes, but also fond, and Harry lets him get away with calling him by his first name because Lupin obviously isn't completely human and it's nice to have company. "What are you doing outside at night? There are dangers on the grounds." He gives the dog a dubious glance.

The dog just glares back at Lupin with his tail cocked, and Harry chuckles. "I have my daggers, Professor. And I know a lot of magic. I would cut the head off anything that was actually a danger. I think this is just a dog, although he won't tell me his name."

Lupin blinks. "Do you mean—you were trying to guess what his previous owner must have called him?"

The dog growls a little. Harry doesn't need to translate to know the dog is offended. He shakes his head. "No, my friend Luna has taught me a little about how to talk to dogs. I was trying that to ask him in his own language so that he could tell me and then I could translate it. But I'm not very good. It doesn't help that I'm trying to speak in the language of wolves. Do you know how to make sense of his words, Professor?"

Lupin sounds like someone who's just been told that he won't make journeyman for another ten years. "What—what do you mean, Harry? Why would I know how to speak the language of wolves?"

"Because you're part wolf." Harry wrinkles his forehead. "How did you manage that, anyway? Did one of your parents change from a wolf into a human and then mate with a human? Or is it just that you're a werewolf?"

Lupin turns and flees in the direction of the castle. Harry blinks after him. "That was weird," he tells the dog, who has lain down with his head in Harry's lap. "You'd think that he would be braver if he was a werewolf. Maybe he did have one wolf parent and he was just scared that I would be prejudiced against him."

The dog licks Harry's hand, and Harry is almost aware of snickers. He smiles and smooths down the black fur. "You still need a name, you know."

The dog remains stubbornly silent, not acting as though he understands either English or the language of wolves. Harry shrugs. "Then I'll call you Shadow, since you came out of them."

Shadow barks his approval, so Harry pets his head again, and then sneaks his new friend into Hogwarts. Probably no one would actually get _upset_ about him having a dog, but they get upset over everything else, so Harry doesn't want to take the chance.

* * *

 _Fled Before the Moon_

"Yes, you're right about Professor Lupin," Luna says, her brow furrowed as she stands next to Harry, waiting for the carriages that will take them to Hogsmeade station. "It's amazing how clearly I can see what he is, but he acts as though he doesn't want anyone to know it. Did you know that his boggart is the full moon?"

"Is _that_ what that thing was?" Harry asks in surprise. He pets Shadow, who's leaning against his leg. "I didn't know that. He just seemed so surprised when nothing formed in front of me, and then I thought it was a crystal ball and he was afraid of Divination or something."

Luna shakes her head decisively. "No, he's a werewolf. But he's afraid of acknowledging it. I tried to talk to him about it and told him that we're fully accepting of people who were part-wolf, but he ran away from me."

Harry frowns. That makes Lupin sound like a coward. He hopes that he doesn't have to despise the man. That would be hard. Harry likes him, despite the intense questioning that followed the boggart class. Professor Lupin just doesn't accept that Harry isn't afraid of anything because he knows how to handle it.

"But you have to be afraid of _something_ ," Lupin said, sounding like he was almost begging.

"There are things I wouldn't like to have happen," Harry admits. "Like someone trying to hurt my people or my friend Luna or my friend Ginny. But I know that I could cut off their heads if they tried, so that's why I'm not afraid."

"Harry, _cutting off heads_ is not a solution to everything."

"Why not?" Harry had asked that question since first year, and he was utterly willing to listen if he could find a human who would explain it to him. But like everyone else, Professor Lupin just gave up in despair.

Now, as they climb into the first of the carriages and say hello to the thestral pulling it, whose name is Black Hair Going Down the Spine in a Short Strip, Harry sighs. He doesn't _mean_ to cause people to despair, even if they are human. It's like they've never thought about it themselves, and that's why they can't explain it to him.

"Are you all right, Harry?"

Luna is looking at him anxiously. Harry smiles at her and squeezes her hand. "I'm fine, Luna. I just think about the idiocy of humans, and it hurts."

Luna nods. "That's one reason I've often thought it would be better to be a Kneazle. Did you know that they don't doubt themselves, and if you speak their language, they will tell you about all their theories of life"

"Then I want to learn Kneazle when we get back from the holidays. I'm not making much progress with Wolf." Harry frowns down at Shadow, who's curled up at his feet. Shadow woofs at him. "Or Dog."

"It's not your fault, Harry. You can't communicate with someone who won't say anything."

"You think that's what's happening with Shadow? Why?"

"I think he should explain that to you, Harry. Just make it safe, and everything will be all right."

* * *

Harry comes back from the goblins' New Year celebration—involving the burning of silver and gold, and held a day before the humans' New Year celebration, which got stolen from theirs—with a smile. Then he opens his door and finds a wizard standing in the middle of Harry's room, clutching a sheet to himself.

Harry raises his eyebrows. "Is that what Luna meant? You're Sirius Black, and you were Shadow?"

Black shuts his mouth and just stares at him. "How can you—you can react so _calmly_?"

"I'm a goblin." Harry sits down next to Sirius on the bed. "All right, talk to me and tell me why you're really here and what was done to you. Since you're not a mass murderer who's trying to kill me right now, that probably means that you aren't a mass murderer at all. And you could have told me that you were named after a star, you know. Indicated it somehow."

Sirius blinks and looks bewildered. But he tells Harry the truth, slowly, and Harry thinks hard about what he says, and comes to one inescapable conclusion at the end of the night when Sirius has turned back into Shadow and is snoring on the bed next to him.

It looks as though the next goblin war is, regrettably, going to have to include Voldemort.


End file.
